BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Too much information? Hearer sensitivity to over-informativeness i
 n referring expressions - Cat Davies\, RCEAL\, University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20100223T160000Z
DTEND:20100223T173000Z
UID:TALK22002@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Chris Cummins
DESCRIPTION:A growing area of interest within experimental pragmatics is h
 earer sensitivity to sub-optimal amounts of detail in referring expression
 s.  I will present a series of experiments focusing on hearer sensitivity 
 to over-informativeness\, prompted by work by Engelhardt\, Bailey & Ferrei
 ra (2006) who found no penalty for over-informative utterances by adult ra
 ters.  We did not replicate Engelhardt et al.'s results\, finding instead 
 that over-informative items were penalised relative to their optimal count
 erparts.  Explanations for this discrepancy in the data will be discussed\
 , e.g. over-informative modification as disambiguation\, and raters' relat
 ive leniency towards utterances that say too much versus those which say t
 oo little.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR