Common Ground in Asking and Understanding Questions

An important part of the context speakers and listeners use in conversation is their “common ground” — their mutual knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions. This paper reports the findings of two experiments that investigated the role of common ground information in asking and understanding questions. Subjects read stories containing conversations that depicted different degrees of common ground information between the characters who served as speakers and addressees. The subjects were asked in Experiment 1 to select the question from a set of alternatives that the speaker would most likely say in a given context. Experiment 2 examined the time it took subjects to understand different questions posed by the speaker given the presence of different types of common ground between the speaker and addressee. The results of the first study indicated that subjects preferred to ask questions which adequately specified the degree of common ground between speakers and addressees that was depicted in the story contexts. Experiment 2 demonstrated that people take less time to comprehend questions that are congruent with the common ground information held by speakers and listeners in a discourse situation. These data highlight the importance of common ground as constituting the context for asking and understanding questions. More generally, these studies provide additional, experimental support for collaborative models of language use.