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Refrence 1

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13 views14 pages

Refrence 1

Uploaded by

Mona Trifosa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Reference

Referring expression and referent

• Referring expression: “a piece of language, a noun phrase, that is used in an utterance


and is linked to something outside language, some living or dead or imaginary entity or
concept or group of entities or concepts.” (Kreidler, 1998, p. 30)

REFERENT

→ A referring expression is NOT a referent.


1a. Howard is your cousin, isn’t he?
1b. Howard is your cousin’s name, isn’t it?
In writing, a referent is either underlined or italicised. In speech, the difference between a
referring expression and referent is not very clear, so it is often used in jokes.
E.g. Q: Where can I find sympathy?
A: In a dictionary.
Washington has three syllables and 600,000 inhabitants.
• There is no natural connection between referring expression and referent. → It is a
result of a convention.
• There being a referring expression does not guarantee there is a referent in the
physical-social world. For example fictitious/imaginary places/creatures: Shunda
Empire, a drink which can make us invisible, or an Indonesian superhero called Mawar
Berduri.
• Two or more referring expressions may have the same referent, but they do not
necessarily have the same meaning
E.g.: Robert Blair the husband of Mildred Stone Blair
the father of Patrick and Robin Blair
the city editor of the Morgantown Daily Enquirer
etc.
→ Differ in connotation
• A referring expression is used to identify, but the identification may be valid only
temporarily. E.g. the girl in the purple sweater
Extension and intension
• The extension of a lexeme = the set of entities which it denotes.
→ The extension of dog: collies, dalmatians, dachshunds, mongrels, etc. that have ever
lived or will ever live and every fictitious creature that is accepted as being a dog

• Lake Ontario & the Dead Sea Scrolls have single collections of items as their extension.
• The intension of a lexeme = the set of properties shared by all members of the
extension.
→ Everything that is denoted by lake must be a body of water of a certain size
surrounded by land.
→ Everything denoted by island is a body of land surrounded by water.
• Extension can change while intension remains the same.
The extension of the president of Indonesia is Joko Widodo.
The intension the president of Indonesia is an individual who is elected by the Indonesian
citizens to lead the country for a certain period of time.
Practice 7.2
How do the lexemes in these pairs differ in their intension (or extension)?
shoe, slipper cup, mug
fruit, vegetable door, gate
Prototype

• Is an object or referent that is considered typical of the whole set.

Practice 7.1
The extension of bird includes robins, eagles, hawks, parrots, ducks, geese, ostriches
and penguins. What is the intension?
What do all the referents of bird have in common and which is not shared by non-birds?
Which of the bird extension above seems to be closer to a prototype and which is
farther away?
Unique and Non-unique Referents

2a We swam in Lake Ontario. REFERRING


BUT
2b We swam in a lake. EXPRESSIONS

Lake Ontario → always refer to the same body of water, while a lake can refer to various
bodies of water.
A referring expression has fixed reference when the referent is a unique entity or unique
set of entities, e.g. Lake Ontario, Japan, Sri Mulyani, MCU, etc.
A referring expression has variable reference if its referent may be different every time
it is used, e.g. that security guard, my coursemate, several students, a classroom, the results.
When a referring expression has fixed reference, knowledge of it is part of one’s general
knowledge; either we know Sri Mulyani or we don’t.
Concrete and Abstract Referents

• Concrete referents/objects: can be seen or touched.


• Abstract referents: cannot be perceived directly through the senses.
• Lexemes with different kinds of denotation generally occur in different kinds of
utterances. As a result, they may have different effects on other lexemes.
E.g.: the key to the front door the key to success
a bright light a bright future
→ Key and bright have literal meanings when they occur in concrete contexts.
→ When they occur in abstract context they have figurative meanings.
Specific and Non-specific Referents

8a We have a dog. (specific)


8b We’d like to have a dog. (non-specific)
9a I’m sure there are answers to all your questions. (specific)
9b I trust we can find answers to all your questions. (non-specific)
Definite and Indefinite Reference

• Demonstrative, possessive, quantitative determiners → identify precise referents →


definite.
Deixis

• “pointing” through language.


• English deictic words: pronouns, locative expressions (here, there, this/these,
that/those), temporal expressions (now, then, yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week,
next month, etc.)
BUT
• “He can’t go today, but tomorrow will be fine.” vs. “Today’s costly apartment buildings
may be tomorrow’s slums”
• “The children are running here and there.”
• “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”
Anaphora

• A kind of secondary reference in which a previous reference is recalled by use of


special function words or equivalent lexemes.
E.g. 16a Jack and Jill tried to lift the box and push it onto the top shelf.
16b However, [he/she/it/they] slipped and fell to the floor.
• Every language has special function words which repeat a reference without actually
repeating the referring expression or any part of it.
Referential Ambiguity

Occurs when
➢ An indefinite referring expression may be specific or not.
I wanted to buy a newspaper. → a specific newspaper or any newspaper.
Ambiguity disappears if we add but I couldn’t find it, or but I couldn’t find one.
➢ Anaphora is unclear because a personal pronoun, he, she, it, they can be linked to either
of two referring expressions:
Jack told Ralph that a visitor was waiting for him.
➢ The pronoun you is used generically or specifically
If you want to get ahead, you have to work hard.
➢ A noun phrase with every can have distributed reference or collected reference:
I’m buying a drink for everyone here.
(One drink for all or one drink each?)

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