{"pk":28045,"title":"How World Knowledge Shifts Adjective Interpretation","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Dimensional adjective interpretation is dependent on the com-parison class – the set of object representations – against whichthe object being modified by the adjective is judged. This paperexplores the factors determining the composition of the com-parison class, arguing that real world size information and pro-totypicality play crucial parts in its determination. Researchersoften implicitly assume that only the objects in immediate vi-sual context constitute the comparison class. However, Exp.1 shows that this information from the visual context is inte-grated with knowledge of real world size and category proper-ties to form the comparison class. Exp. 2 shows that prototypeinformation is utilized when making size judgments of cartoonimages, while size judgments of objects in photographs drawmore heavily on a speaker’s prior knowledge about the actualsize of the objects in the world. Exp. 3 demonstrates that theeffects observed in Exp. 1 and 2 were not caused by the adjec-tives used, but rather reflect differences between the size of theobjects depicted in the images.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"semantics; pragmatics; adjectives; context; grad-ability; scale structure; prototype effects; size perception"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0v65c9qh","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Sara","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kessler","name_suffix":"","institution":"Stanford","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28045/galley/17684/download/"}]}