Gradable Adjectives in Referring Expressions

This talk concerns gradable adjectives (e.g., tall and full) in definite descriptions used to pick out a referent in context (e.g., the tall/full one). I will review existing theories of the semantics and pragmatics of gradable adjectives, which mainly focus on descriptive uses (e.g., John is tall/this glass is full). I will argue that a popular classical semantic theory (Kennedy 2007) and a recent pragmatic theory implemented in the Rational Speech Act framework (Lassiter & Goodman 2013, 2015) have difficulties accounting for both the descriptive and referential uses of gradable adjectives, and propose an analysis that combines the strengths of both approaches and avoids their limitations. I will discuss some remaining challenges and the broader implications of this case study on context sensitivity and the semantics/pragmatics interface.