Philosophers have found it hard to agree on a precise definition for reference, but intuitively we are talking about the speaker’s use of words to “point to” something in the world; that is, to direct the hearer’s attention to something, or to enable the hearer to identify something. Suppose we are told that Brazilians used to “refer to” Pelé as o rei ‘the king’.2 This means that speakers used the phrase o rei to direct their hearers’ attention to a particular individual, namely the most famous soccer player of the 20th century. Similarly, we might read that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is often “referred to” as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, in honor of the famous American baseball player who died of this disease. This means that people use the phrase Lou Gehrig’s Disease to direct their hearers’ attention to that particular disease.
A referring expression is an expression (normally some kind of noun phrase) which a speaker uses to refer to something. The identity of the referent is determined in different ways for different kinds of referring expressions. A proper name like King Henry VIII, Abraham Lincoln, or Mao Zedong, always refers to the same individual. (In saying this, of course, we are ignoring various complicating factors, such as the fact that two people may have the same name. We will focus for the moment on the most common or basic way of using proper names, namely in contexts where they have a single unambiguous referent.) For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as rigid designators. “Natural kind” terms, e.g. names of species (camel, octopus, durian) or substances (gold, salt, methane), are similar. When they are used to refer to the species as a whole, or the substance in general, rather than any specific instance, these terms are also rigid designators: their referent does not depend on the context in which they are used. Some examples of this usage are presented in (3).
(3) a. The octopus has eight tentacles and is quite intelligent.
b. Camels can travel long distances without drinking.
c. Methane is lighter than air and highly flammable.
For most other referring expressions, reference does depend on the context of use. Deictic elements (sometimes called indexicals) are words which refer to something in the speech situation itself. For example, the pronoun I refers to the current speaker, while you refers to the current addressee. Here typically refers to the place of the speech event, while now typically refers to the time of the speech event.
Third person pronouns can be used with deictic reference, e.g. “Who is he?” (while pointing); but more often are used anaphorically. An anaphoric element is one whose reference depends on the reference of another NP within the same discourse. (This other NP is called the antecedent.) The pronoun he in sentence (4) is used anaphorically, taking George as its antecedent.
(4) Susan refuses to marry Georgei because hei smokes.
Pronouns can be used with quantifier phrases, like the pronoun his in sentence (5a); but in this context, the pronoun does not actually refer to any specific individual. So in this context, the pronoun is not a referring expression.3 For the same reason, quantifier phrases are not referring expressions, as illustrated in (5b). (The symbol “#” in (5b) indicates that the sentence is grammatical but unacceptable on semantic or pragmatic grounds.)
(5) a. [Every boy]i should respect hisi mother.
b. [Every American male]i loves football; #hei watched three games last weekend.
Some additional examples that illustrate why quantified noun phrases cannot be treated as referring expressions are presented in (6–8). As example (6a) illustrates, reflexive pronouns are normally interpreted as having the same reference as their antecedent; but this principle does not hold when the antecedent is a quantified noun phrase (6b).
(6) a. John trusts himself is equivalent to: John trusts John.
b. Everyone trusts himself is not equivalent to: Everyone trusts everyone.
As we discuss in Chapter 3, a sentence of the form X is Estonian and X is not Estonian is a contradiction; it can never be true, whether X refers to an individual as in (7b) or a group of individuals as in (7c). However, when X is replaced by certain quantified noun phrases, e.g. those beginning with some or many, the sentence could be true. This shows that these quantified noun phrases cannot be interpreted as referring to either individuals or groups of individuals.4
(7) a. #X is Estonian and X is not Estonian.
b. #John is Estonian and John is not Estonian.
c. #My parents are Estonian and my parents are not Estonian.
d. Some/many people are Estonian and some/many people are not Estonian.
As a final example, the contrast in (8) suggests that neither every student nor all students can be interpreted as referring to the set of all students, e.g. at a particular school. There is much more to be said about quantifiers. We will give a brief introduction to this topic in Chapter 3, and discuss them in more detail in Chapter 14.
(8) a. The student body outnumbers the faculty.
b. #Every student outnumbers the faculty.
c. #All students outnumbers the faculty.
Common noun phrases may or may not refer to anything. Definite noun phrases (sometimes called definite descriptions) like those in (9) are normally used in contexts where the hearer is able to identify a unique referent. But definite descriptions can also be used generically, without referring to any specific individual, like the italicized phrases in (10).
(9) a. this book
b. the sixteenth President of the United States
c. my eldest brother
(10) Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can.5
Indefinite descriptions may be used to refer to a specific individual, like the object NP in (11a); or they may be non-specific, like the object NP in (11b). Specific indefinites are referring expressions, while non-specific indefinites are not.
(11) a. My sister has just married a cowboy.
b. My sister would never marry a cowboy.
c. My sister wants to marry a cowboy.
In some contexts, like (11c), an indefinite NP may be ambiguous between a specific vs. a non-specific interpretation. Under the specific interpretation, (11c) says that my sister wants to marry a particular individual, who happens to be a cowboy. Under the non-specific interpretation, (11c) says that my sister would like the man she marries to be a cowboy, but doesn’t have any particular individual in mind yet. We will discuss this kind of ambiguity in more detail in Chapter 12.
2 Of course, Pelé rose to fame long after Brazil became a republic, so there was no king ruling the country at that time.
3 Pronouns used in this way are functioning as “bound variables”, as described in Chapter 4.
4 Peters & Westerståhl (2006: 49–52) present a mathematical proof showing that quantified noun phrases cannot be interpreted as referring to sets of individuals.
5 From the poem “Thinking” by Walter D. Wintle, first published 1905(?). This poem is widely copied and often mis-attributed. Authors wrongly credited with the poem include Napoleon Hill, C.W. Longenecker, and the great American football coach Vince Lombardi.
