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<Paper uid="W06-1409">
  <Title>measuring the benefits for readers</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="abstr">
    <SectionTitle>
Abstract
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> It is often desirable that referring expressions be chosen in such a way that their referents are easy to identify. In this paper, we investigate to what extent identification becomes easier by the addition of logically redundant properties.We focus on hierarchically structured domains, whose content is not fully known to the reader when the referring expression is uttered.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Introduction Common sense suggests that speakers and writers who want to get their message across should make their utterances easy to understand. Broadly speaking, this view is confirmed by empirical research (Deutsch 1976, Mangold 1986, Levelt 1989, Sonnenschein 1984, Clark 1992, Cremers 1996, Arts 2004, Paraboni and van Deemter 2002, van der Sluis, 2005). The present paper follows in the footsteps of Paraboni and van Deemter (2002) by focussing on hierarchically structured domains and asking whether any benefits are obtained when an algorithm for the generation of referring expressions (GRE) builds logical redundancy into the descriptions that it generates. Where Paraboni and van Deemter (2002) reported on the results of a simple experiment in which subjects were asked to say which description they preferred in a given context, the present paper describes a much more elaborate experiment, measuring how difficult it is for subjects to find the referent of a description.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>