Over-Specification of Small Cardinalities in Referential Communication

The paper presents experimental evidence for the over-specification of small cardinalities in referential communication. The first experiment shows that when presented with a small set (2, 3, or 4) of unique objects, the speaker includes a numeral denoting a small cardinality into the description of given objects, although it is over-informative for the hearer (e.g., “three stars”). On the contrary, when presented with a large set of unique objects, the speaker does not include a numeral denoting a large cardinality into their description, so she produces a bare plural (e.g., “stars”). The effect of small cardinalities resembles the effect of over-specifying color in referential communication, which has been extensively studied in recent years (cf. Tarenskeen et al., 2015; Rubio-Fernández, 2016, among many others). This suggests that, like color, small cardinalities are absolute and salient. The second experiment demonstrates that when presented with an identical small set of monochrome objects, the speaker over-specifies a small cardinality to a much greater extent than a color. This suggests that small cardinalities are even more salient than color. The third experiment reveals that when slides are flashed on the screen one by one, highlighted objects of small cardinalities are still over-specified. We argue that a plausible explanation for the salience of small cardinalities is a subitizing effect, which is the human capacity to instantaneously grasp small cardinalities.