Accessibility and reference production: the interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic factors

This chapter reviews recent research on speakers’ referential choices in discourse. It focuses specifically on the choice to mention a certain referent first on the one hand, and on the choice to produce a pronoun or a more elaborate noun phrase on the other. Whereas traditional theories of reference have relied mainly on the influence of the linguistic context to explain these choices, recent psycholinguistic studies have started to investigate the effect of non-linguistic factors as well. Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that the two referential choices (choice of referent and choice of referring expression) are largely driven by different sets of factors, contrary to the claim that they are both related to the accessibility of mental representations in memory. It is concluded that these findings are best explained by assuming that referents can be accessible on different levels: a local and a more global discourse level. Referential choices may be influenced by both levels of accessibility, but with different probabilities for different referential choices.