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Recent studies have shown that listeners use verbs and other predicate terms to anticipate reference to semantic entities during real-time language comprehension. This process involves evaluating the denoted action against relevant properties of potential referents. The current study explored whether action-relevant properties are readily available to comprehension systems as a result of the embodied nature of linguistic and conceptual representations. In three experiments, eye movements were monitored as listeners followed instructions to move depicted objects on a computer screen. Critical instructions contained the verb return (e.g., Now return the block to area 3), which presupposes the previous displacement of its complement object – a property that is not reflected in perceptible or stable characteristics of objects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that predictions for previously displaced objects are generated …