Almost all instances of discourse contain reference to objects – either those present in the actual surroundings, or those conceptualized in the speakers' minds. We will address the question when and why objects are referred to, and then turn to aspects of granularity, vagueness, and (over-/ under-) specification that may be relevant in discourse. Furthermore, we address the impact of situational factors (for instance, competing objects), the role of attentional focus and saliency, and the discourse history, all of which influence the ways in which object reference is realized linguistically. One major topic of interest will be how speakers agree on a linguistic representation in dialogue by interactive alignment. Apart from intensive discussions of relevant articles from the areas of psycholinguistics and discourse analysis (linguistic pragmatics), we will jointly carry out a number of simple experimental studies to replicate earlier findings and formulate and test additional innovative hypotheses.