The limits of sense and reference
A linguistic expression refers if it picks out an entity or set of entities in some world – either the real world, or some possible or imagined world. It will be obvious from this description that whether or not a linguistic expression refers will depend on the context in which it is used. For example, consider the sentence Marion is a professional harpist. The first noun phrase, the name Marion, identifies a particular individual as the entity about whom the information is a professional harpist is given. The second noun phrase, however, a professional harpist, would usually be said not to refer in this context. This is because it does not pick out a particular entity or set of entities as its object in the same way as expressions like Marion. Instead, a professional harpist has a predicative function: it is part of the information given about Marion. Similarly, the phrases high in fibre, low in fat and cholesterol free in (10) are predicative and thus non-referring:
(10) Like all dried fruit, apricots are high in fibre, low in fat and cholesterol free.
Apricots, by contrast, refers (to the class of apricots), and all dried fruit refers to the class of dried fruit.
Many lexical categories are typically non-referential. Verbs, for example, are typically predicative: the inherent role of a verb is to give information about some already identified entity, rather than to refer to that entity directly. Nevertheless, it will often be useful to think of verbs as referring to actions, and of sentences as referring to situations, and this is a usage we will often adopt in this book.
It is also important to note that reference is usually accomplished at the phrasal, not the lexical, level. Thus, in English, it is noun phrases which refer and not the individual nouns which make them up. In the sentence An heir to a Danish steel fortune must leave behind his quiet life in Stockholm it is the noun phrases – An heir to a Danish steel fortune, a Danish steel fortune, his quiet life in Stockholm, and Stockholm – which accomplish the identification of particular entities in the world. Since Stockholm, as a proper noun, is analysed as a noun phrase in its own right, it is the only noun in the sentence which does uniquely pick out or refer to a particular entity (the capital of Sweden) – but it only does this as a noun phrase, not as an individual noun. None of the other individual nouns in the sentence constitutes a noun phrase, and as a result, none of them refers: heir, fortune, and life do not in themselves identify any single entities about which information could be given. However, in other contexts, they can certainly refer. For example, life in the sentence life is uneventful is part of a noun phrase referring to an entity, life.
QUESTION Which of the following noun phrases are used referentially? What problems are there in deciding?
The importance of predication shows that reference is not always a relevant aspect of the meaning of a linguistic term. Furthermore, the difference between referring and non-referring uses of lexemes is often not marked by any overt grammatical means: languages, in other words, often don’t seem to care whether an expression refers or not. As a result, the question of whether a given noun phrase refers may sometimes be ambiguous. While some expressions clearly refer and others clearly don’t, there is a range of intermediate cases in which an expression may or may not be referring. These possibilities are reflected in the following sentences, from Givón (1984: 389):
(11a) is clearly referential, (11b) may or may not be, (11c) is probably non referential, but still might be intended to pick out a specific individual, whereas (11d) is least likely to refer to a specific person.
QUESTION What factors apart from the existence or non-existence of a specific referent might determine the speaker’s choice between (11) a–d?
