{"pk":29436,"title":"Informational goals, sentence structure, and comparison class inference","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Understanding a gradable adjective (e.g., big) requires mak-ing reference to a comparison class, a set of objects or entitiesagainst which the referent is implicitly compared (e.g., big fora Great Dane), but how do listeners decide upon a compari-son class? Simple models of semantic composition stipulatethat the adjective combines with a noun, which necessarily be-comes the comparison class (e.g., “That Great Dane is big”means big for a Great Dane). We investigate an alternativehypothesis built on the idea that the utility of a noun in anadjectival utterance can be either for reference (getting the lis-tener to attend to the right object) or predication (describing aproperty of the referent). Therefore, we hypothesize that whenthe presence of a noun N can be explained away by its util-ity in reference (e.g., being in the subject position: “That N isbig”), it is less likely to set the comparison class. Across threepre-registered experiments, we find evidence that listeners usethe noun as a cue to infer comparison classes consistent with atrade-off between reference and predication. This work high-lights the complexity of the relation between the form of anutterance and its meaning.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"comparison class; adjectives; information struc-ture; reference; predication"}],"section":"Language and Meaning","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t41d5rp","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Michael","middle_name":"Henry","last_name":"Tessler","name_suffix":"","institution":"MIT","department":""},{"first_name":"Polina","middle_name":"","last_name":"Tsvilodub","name_suffix":"","institution":"Osnabruck University","department":""},{"first_name":"Jesse","middle_name":"","last_name":"Snedeker","name_suffix":"","institution":"Harvard University","department":""},{"first_name":"Roger","middle_name":"P.","last_name":"Levy","name_suffix":"","institution":"MIT","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2020-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/29436/galley/19296/download/"}]}