Dutch speakers take referent predictability into account, irrespective of addressee presence

Language comprehension involves continuously making predictions about what will be mentioned next. If speakers take these predictions into account, one would expect that they try to be extra clear (e.g., by saying “the girl with the big earrings”) when they are going to say something less predictable. Conversely, speakers do not need to be as clear when the listener already expects the thing that they are about to mention, and can therefore suffice with a pronoun such as “she”. Previous research testing this hypothesis has found mixed results, with some studies finding that the referent’s pred... Mehr ...