Discourse focus and conceptual relations in resolving referential ambiguity

The study discusses the cognitive aspects of discourse focus, verbal descriptions, and conceptual relations in resolving referential ambiguity. In three experiments, subjects were presented with pictorial and verbal materials that constituted a referentially ambiguous situation. The focus built up during preceding tasks determined the selection of a referent in a critical reference task. Judgments of task difficulty, as well as the speed of referent identification, did depend on the type of verbal description used (definite vs. indefinite) and on the degree of denotative aptness. The findings suggest that focusing and the establishment of semantic relations are integral parts of cognitive activity in the resolution of ambiguous reference.