MEANT WITH COLOR BUT SAID WITHOUT - WHEN IS THE COLOR OF AN OBJECT NOT NAMED

Within the psychology of language and cognition, a problem is demonstr ated that is generally important and that relates to object references : On the one hand, there is good cause to speak in a detailed way in o rder to supply the communication partner with lots of information. On the other hand, there are assumptions, e.g. the principle of informati vity (Grice, 1979), according to which it appears desirable to enrich one's utterances with no more information than needed. However, if we look at object references, we often find more attributes specified tha n would be necessary with respect to the partner's unambiguous identif ication of the intended object. In many cases, this additional specifi cation of certain attributes (e.g., color) facilitates the partner's i dentification of the object in question. However, facilitation is effe ctive only in cases in which the additionally specified attribute is p erceptually salient and the partner's field of search is narrowed as w ell. This condition holds if the object to be named involves a value o n the specified attribute that distinguishes the object from at least some of the other objects in its context. Empirical studies revealed t he color of an object to be most important among the redundant, but sa lient attributes that are often specified additionally. However, the c olor of an object tends to be not specified in cases where it is chara cteristic of the object and, therefore, can be easily inferred by the partner. We report on two experiments from which we learned three thin gs: (1) The color of an object is specified more frequently if it allo ws for the discrimination of the object from (at least some) other obj ects in the context. (2) The color of an object is specified less freq uently if it is characteristic of the object. (3) The aforementioned r esult remains unchanged if an experimental manipulation is introduced that makes the speakers doubt whether the partner can easily infer the color of the object. Thus, the specification of attributes when namin g objects appears to be systematic, but more complicated than was prev iously assumed.