Come talk to us! We're here to answer your questions about the poster during the Saturday poster session from 12:10pm - 2pm. https://mit.zoom.us/j/530403797 (other connectivity options below) Most Great Danes are big dogs, but some are also big Great Danes. Understanding a gradable adjective (e.g., “big”) requires making reference to a comparison class, a set of objects or entities against which the referent is implicitly compared (e.g., big for a Great Dane), but how do listeners decide upon a comparison class? A simple theory guided by semantic composition stipulate that the adjective combines with a noun, which necessarily becomes the comparison class (e.g., “That Great Dane is big” means big for a Great Dane). We investigate an alternative, inferential hypothesis: the noun in a sentence is a cue to the comparison class, which must be integrated with other cues, like syntax, for a listener to infer the intended comparison class. We theorize that the utility of a noun in an adjectival utterance can be either for reference (getting the listener to attend to the right object) or predication (describing a property of the referent; in the case of adjective understanding, this amounts to setting the comparison class). Therefore, we hypothesize that when nouns are in the subject position (“That NP is big”), they are more likely to be used for reference (e.g., via composition with the deictic ‘That’) and hence, less likely to set the comparison class; in contrast, nouns in the predicate position (“That’s a big NP”) are less likely to be used for reference and more likely to set the comparison class. Across three pre-registered experiments, we find evidence that listeners integrate the noun of a sentence with syntactic information and world knowledge to infer comparison classes, consistent with a trade-off between reference and predication. One tap mobile +16465588656,,530403797# US (New York) +16699006833,,530403797# US (San Jose) Meeting ID: 530 403 797 US : +1 646 558 8656 or +1 669 900 6833 International Numbers: https://mit.zoom.us/u/ac4AjF5H9U Join by SIP 530403797@zoomcrc.com Join by Skype for Business https://mit.zoom.us/skype/530403797