The dataset used in this project investigates the acoustics of referring expressions like “the blue banana”. Referring is one of the most basic uses of language. How does a speaker choose a referential expression when they want to refer to a specific object like a banana? The object’s context plays a large role in that choice. Generally, speakers aim to be as informative as possible to uniquely establish a referent (Grice 1975). Thus we expect them to only use for example a modifier like “blue” if it is strictly necessary for disambiguation (e.g. the adjective yellow when there is a yellow and a less ripe green banana).

But there is much evidence against strictly rational speakers. Speakers are often overinformative, i.e. they use referring expressions that are more specific than necessary. This redundancy has been argued to facilitate object identification and  more efficient communication (Arts et al. 2011, Paraboni et al. 2007, Rubio-Fernandez 2016). For example, Degen et al. (2020) show that modifiers that are less typical for a given referent (e.g. a blue banana) are more likely to be used in an overinformative scenario (e.g. when there is just one banana).

The literature has a strong focus on whether a certain referential expression is chosen or not. However, speech communication much richer, allowing for more subtle enhancements of the communicative signal to make referential disambiguation easier. Spoken languages utilize suprasegmental aspects of speech to disambiguate referents and signal (un)predictable content. So we ask: 

Do speakers acoustically modify utterances to signal atypical word combinations? (e.g. “a blue banana” vs. “a yellow banana”)?

To answer this question, we analyse recordings from an experimental study. We elicited sentences with noun-modifier pairs of varying typicality. Native German speakers were asked to instruct a confederate to select a specific referent among four objects presented on a screen. The instructions were presented to the subject via written form, which the subject read out loud to the confederate. An example input is “Please put the cube on top of the blue banana.”. The target noun-modifier pair was either typical (“yellow banana”), medium-typical (“green banana”), or atypical (“blue banana”). Your task will be to investigate whether typicality affects the acoustics of the pair.