# Title Informativity, topicality, and speech cost: Comparing models of speakers’ choices of referring expressions ### Authors Naho Orita, Eliana Vornov, and Naomi Feldman ## Abstract This study formalizes and compares two major hypotheses in speakers' choices of referring expressions: the Topicality model that chooses a form based on the topicality of the referent, and the Rational model that chooses a form based on the informativity of the form and its speech cost. Simulations suggest that both the topicality of the referent and informativity of the word are important to consider in speakers' choices of reference forms, while a speech cost metric that prefers shorter forms may not be. ## Script The script [speakers.py][1] contains: - Two kinds of speaker models that predict speakers' choices of referring expressions, pronoun vs. name in particular (i) Rational model (using the Rational Speech Act framework) (ii) Topicality model - Evaluations: form predictions, BIC, and AUC score Place this script and sample_dat.pickle in the same directory and do `$python speakers.py`. ## Plan Agreement annotations and preprocessing codes will be uploaded when they are ready. [1]: https://osf.io/fxebr/