REFERENCE & INFERENCE (study of pragmatics)

REFERENCE & INFERENCE

Reference is an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms (referring expression) to enable a listener, or reader, to identify something.

Referring expressions, which can be;

-          Proper nouns (ex: Shakespeare, Cathy Revuelto, Hawaii)

-          Noun Phrases which are definite (ex: the author, the singer, the island)

-          Indefinite (ex: a man, a woman, a beautiful place)

-          Pronouns (ex: he, her, it, them)

Reference is clearly tied to the speaker’s goals (to identify something) and the speaker beliefs (can the listener be expected to know that particular something?) in the use of language.

We must also recognize the role of inference. Because there is no direct relationship between entities and words, the listener’s task is to infer correctly which entity the speaker intends to identify by using a particular referring expression.

·        Referential and Attributive uses

Ex: he wants to marry ‘a woman with lots of money’

            (It can designate an entity that is known to the speaker only in terms of its descriptive properties. The word ‘a’ could be replaced by ‘any’ in this case. This is sometimes called an attributive use, meaning ‘whoever/whatever fits the description’. It would be distinct from a referential use whereby I actually have a person in mind and instead of using her name or some other description 

·        Names and Referents

Ex: Brazil wins world cup

(The referent is to be understood as football team, not as a government. The nature of reference interpretation just described is also what allows readers to make sense of this utterance using names or countries)

·        The Role of Co-Text

Our ability to identify intended referents has actually depended on more than our understanding of the referring expression. It has been aided by the linguistic material, or co-text, accompanying the referring expression. The referring expression actually provides a range of reference, that is, a number of possible referents.

Ex:       a. ‘The cheese sandwich’ is made with white bread (food)

b. ‘The cheese sandwich’ left without paying (person)

While the phrase ‘the cheese sandwich’ stays the same, the different co-texts lead to different type of interpretation in each case. Of course, co-text is just linguistic part of the environment in which a referring expression is used. The physical environment, or context, is perhaps more easily recognized as having a powerful impact on how referring expressions are to be interpreted.  

·        Anaphoric Reference

Ex: in the film, a man and the woman were trying to wash a cat. The man was holding the cat while the woman poured water on it. He said something to her and they started laughing.

In English, initial reference, or introductory mention, is often indefinite (‘a man’, ‘a woman’, ‘a cat’). In the definite noun phrases (‘the man’, ‘the cat’, ‘the woman’) and the pronouns (‘it’, ‘he’, ‘her’, ‘they’) are examples of subsequent reference to already introduced referents, generally known as anaphoric reference, or anaphora. In technical terms, the second or subsequent expression is the anaphor and the initial expression is the antecedent.

Ex: I turned the corner and almost stepped on it. There was a large snake in the middle of the path.

Note that pronoun ‘it’ is used first and is difficult to interpret until the noun phrase is presented in the next line. This pattern is technically known as cataphora, and is much less common than anaphora.

Ex: Cook for three minutes. 

When the interpretation requires us to identify and entity, as in ‘Cook (?) for three minutes’, and no linguistic expression is present, it’s called zero anaphora, or ellipsis. The use of zero anaphora as a means of maintaining reference clearly creates an expectation that the listener will be able to infer who or what the speaker intends to identify. It is also another obvious case of more being communicated that is said.