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How do children learn to connect expressions (e.g “that red apple”) to the real-world objects they refer to? The dominant view in developmental psychology is that children rely primarily on descriptive information encoded in content words (red, apple). In contrast, linguistic semantic theories of adult language attribute primacy to the grammar (e.g. words like that, another), which first establish the status of potential referents within the discourse context (old, new) before descriptive information can factor in. These theories predict that reference can succeed even when the description does not match the referent. We explore this novel prediction in adults and children. Over three experiments, we found that (i) adults relied on the articles to establish the referent, even when the noun description did not fit, consistent with grammar-first accounts; (ii) consistent with description-first accounts, and contrary to adult behavior, 3-5yo children prioritized the descriptions provided by the nouns, despite being sensitive to grammatical information.