REFERENCE, REFERENT AND DENOTATION

REFERENCE, REFERENT AND DENOTATION

1. REFERENCE

   • Reference as an act in which a speaker or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a listener or reader to indentify something.
     • is not based on objectively correct (versus incorrect) naming but on some logically successful (versus unsuccessful) choice of expression.
       • Example: a. There’s a man waiting for you.
         • between speaker and listener know about who or what something they talking about because they have similar background knowledge
   • Referring expression
     • Proper noun
       • Noun phrases definite
         • Noun phrases indefinite
           • Pronouns

2. REFERENT

   • whatever things, event or situations in the world the language is about
     • For example, in the sentence Mary saw me, the referent of the word Mary is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken of, while the referent of the word me is the person uttering the sentence.
       • Two expressions which have the same referent are said to be co-referential. In the sentence John had his dog with him, for instance, the noun John and the pronoun him are co-referential, since they both refer to the same person (John).
   • Is a person or thing to which a name

3. DENOTATION

   • is the dictionary definition of a term. It is the basic meaning of a word, what a term means.
     • consists of the individual things or objects to which the term can be applied.
       • The Denotation of a term ‘man’ consists of all the individual things called ‘men’---of all things to which the term ‘man’ can be applied.
       • for example