Referent

This paper employs a range of examples from improvisatory practices in 20th century art, music, and theatre to extend psychologist Jeff Pressing’s concept (1984) of a musical constraint known as a referent. The aim is to construct a socio-cultural perspective of the term where referent is associated with an “ideological constraint” that enables and restrains freedom within an implicit structure. A theory is presented that contends that improvisers across the major domains of art, music, and theatre are guided by socio-cultural referents as much as they are influenced by the constraints implicit to the structure of an improvisatory system or tradition

Le Jardin des plantes, roman qui non seulement couronne l'entreprise romanesque entamée depuis L'Herbe mais en est comme le condensé esthétique, peut se lire comme un métadiscours en acte sur la poétique qui sous-tend cette entreprise et dont un des principaux traits est l'assomption du référent comme présence contextuelle dans un texte qui néanmoins la transfigure.  L'écrivain entre dans son oeuvre en s'inscrivant explicitement dans un certain contexte, et cette correspondance entre sa sitation dans ce contexte (son exclusion, sa solitude) et son écriture (fragmentaire, difficile, slitaire) nous conduit à admettre qu'on ne peut pas séparer l'écrivain dans le monde de l'écrivain devant sa table de travail.

[PT] Trata-se de definir o campo da Semântica, apontando a sua trajetória desde os estudos iniciais, ligados aos da etimologia e da gramática histórica. São expostas as razões de prevalecer, na semântica tradicional, o enfoque lexical, discutindo-se também a questão do referente, excluído nos estudos estruturalistas, mas reintroduzido pelas teorias contemporâneas. Do exame das tendências atuais mais importantes – destacando-se a teoria dos protótipos como parte da lingüística cognitiva – chega-se a aproximações com a semântica histórica. As chamadas “vias evolutivas” seriam regidas por um saber enciclopédico e pela capacidade humana de categorização. Igualmente, ressurge a preocupação da semântica histórica com o léxico e com a polissemia, porém recolocada dentro da função comunicativa da linguagem humana.

[EN] A definition of the field of semantics is attempted, approaching its development from the earliest studies, in connection with those of etymology as well as with those of classical grammar. Reasons are given for the prevalence of the lexical approach in traditional semantics, and the question of the referent, excluded in structuralist studies but reintroduced in contemporary theories, is also taken into account. An approximation with classical semantics is arrived at from the exams of the most significant contemporary trends, with emphasis on prototype theory as part of cognitive linguistics. Evolutionary paths are seen as based on encyclopedic knowledge as well as on the human ability of categorization. The concern of classical semantics with the lexicon and with polysemy is reconsidered and situated within the communicative function of language.

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A definition of mysticism based on mysticism studies can show the phenomenological and semiological character of mystical experience. The experience of the One is both a limit-experience and unsayable; these two features respectively connect to phenomenology and to semiology. Following this path, we uncover a general relation between the two disciplines, as Greimas held. What is more is that mystical experience trials two core notions such as intentionality and reference. This highlights how peculiarly mysticism participates of the two disciplines’ subject matter. Considering Sini’s account of external world, it is possible to deconstruct the notion of referent as sign-independent and restore this notion as sign-dependent – although not necessarily as language-dependent. What Ghilardi holds to be a circularity between perception and signification is shortly broken in the mystical experience, but it is as much naturally fixed as it naturally went undone. We can experience non-linguistically, but we need to tell it. The reason of this fact is that only languages can say the unsayable, as Hjelmslev reached by considering the omniformativity of historical-natural languages. The analysis of mysticism corroborates the conclusion that, both in sign function analysis of sign and in semiotic triangle analysis of sign, what we call “referent” does not figure outside the sign.

The current study explores whether contextual repetition during fast mapping facilitates word learning. Three-year-old children completed fast mapping and test trials using a touchscreen computer. For half of the children, the non-targets (competitors) repeated across learning trials and for other children there was no repetition. All children received the same test trials. Children who experienced contextual repetition, that is, children for whom the competitors repeated during the initial fast mapping task, demonstrated word learning. These data demonstrate that children's word learning is facilitated by the presence of extraneous yet predictable information in the initial fast mapping task.