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Many linguistic and psycholinguistic investigations (Chafe 1976, Prince 1981, Greene et al. 1994) showed that more elaborated types of referring expressions are used for new entities, whereas less elaborated forms are usually chosen for old or given information. The pronoun in the second sentence in (11) refers back to the subject referent, Ana, which represents old or given information. The second referent, a boy, is introduced in the next sentence by means of an indefinite noun phrase, as he was not mentioned in the discourse before.

(11)	Ana1 went to the seaside this morning. She1 was happy to meet a boy2 there.

The contrast between given and new information usually differentiates between the amount of information which has been explicitly evoked in the discourse (in contrast to implicitly introduced or inferred information). Givenness as a characteristic of discourse referents offers us a superficial insight into the reasons why speakers opt for a particular type of referring expression. Whether a discourse entity way explicitly mentioned in the previous discourse or not is neither sufficient nor necessary to describe the contrast between accessible and less accessible information. In example (12), both Mary and Paula are introduced in the first sentence by means of proper names. However, even if both referents represent given information, the pronoun in the second sentence is used to refer back to Mary, while the second referent, Paula, is picked up by a more explicit type of referring expression, i.e. a definite noun phrase.

(12)	Mary1 went to the seaside and saw Paula2. She1 was very happy to see her friend2 there.

It thus seems that some referents are more prone to be mentioned with reduced types of referring expressions than others and that givenness cannot be the only factor that modulates this choice. Furthermore, consider a context in which my addressee knows that I have a dog and that this dog suffers of cirrhosis of the liver. It seems very natural for my interlocutor to ask a sentence like the one illustrated in (13) the moment we meet, as a conversation starter, even if we did not mention the dog during the present conversation.

(13)	How is he today?

On the basis of shared knowledge or common ground (Stalnaker 1974) between discourse participants, the hearer of sentence (13) is able to identify the intended referent associated to the pronoun he. Shorter types of referring expressions depend not only on explicitly introduced referents, but are sensitive to other types of knowledge (i.e. world knowledge, situational knowledge, discourse knowledge, among others) as well.

Summing up, the dichotomy between given and new information is not sufficient to predict which referent is more accessible at a given time in the discourse. Consequently, this distinction cannot predict which referent will be mentioned again in the discourse, or which type of referring expression will be used for this purpose.