Stump (2001, 11) defines exponence as ``the only association between inflectional markings and morphosyntactic properties.''. This association is at the very core of morphology. Just as Stump’s, most definitions of exponence do not expressly indicate a directionality in the association. Yet, most morphological theories address it strictly in the direction of production, asking how marking realizes morphosyntactic meaning; or more generally how inflectional forms are produced. Yet, most morphological theories address it strictly in the direction of production, asking how marking realizes morphosyntactic meaning; or more generally how inflectional forms are produced. Production is indeed one of the core problems inflection poses to speakers. Yet, linguistic communication generally involves not only a producer, but also a receiver. Hence, a complementary task to production is that of comprehension: when hearing an inflected form, how can we recognize its morphosyntactic meaning? Which parts of words support these inferences? Surprisingly, this perspective has received much less attention. In this abstract, we describe the problems raised by a comprehension-based theory of exponence; propose a simple implemented algorithm for segmentation of fine grained formatives from inflected paradigms and a theory of exponential meaning grounded in set theory. This lets us study patterns in the discriminative power of formatives, and set the grounds for large scale typology of exponence.