Postnominal numerals are over-specified in referential communication: Evidence from Thai in comparison to Russian

This paper presents experimental evidence for the over-specification (redundant use) of Thai postnominal numerals in referential communication. The first experiment reveals high rates of over-specification in oral responses that include Thai postnominal and Russian prenominal numerals tested in a contrastive multi-number visual context. The second experiment demonstrates lower but still relatively high rates of over-specification in written responses that include Thai postnominal numerals and color items tested in less contrastive two-number and bichrome visual contexts. Given this, the paper discusses the incrementality hypothesis and argues for the incremental production and processing of postnominal modifiers, which are explained by the visual salience of small cardinalities (2, 3, 4) and color and are regulated by syntactic linearization rules. The paper also provides additional evidence for the consistencywhich shapes the speaker’s utterances as either over-specified or minimally specified throughout the whole communication.