Common Ground and the Understanding of Demonstrative Reference

Suppose a speaker gestures toward four flowers and asks a listener, "How would you describe the color of this f lower?" How does the listener infer which of the four flowers is being referred to? It is proposed that he selects the one he judges to be most salient with respect to the speaker 's and his common ground-the i r mutual knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions. In a field experiment, it was found that listeners would accept demonstrative references (like this flower) with more than one potential referent. Three further experiments showed that listeners select referents based on estimates of their mutual beliefs about perceptual salience, the speaker 's goals, and the speaker 's presuppositions and assertions. Common ground, it is argued, is necessary in general for understanding demonstrative reference.