Referring Expression, And Equative Sentence

Referring expression is any expression used in an utterance to refer to

something or someone, namely used with particular referent in the mind of
the speaker. For example, when I utter Belal called me last night; I have a
particular person in my mind when I say Belal, is a referring expression. On
the other hand, when I utter There is no Belal in this class, is not a referring
expression, because in this case I would not have a particular person in my
mind.
Equative
sentence
An equative sentence is one which used to assert that two referring expression
have the same referent. The following are equative sentences:
Mrs.
Laura
is
my
lecturer.
That
man
who
walks
fast
is
my
brother.
Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde
..

Referring expression
A referring expression (RE), in linguistics, is any noun phrase, or surrogate for a
noun phrase, whose function in a text (spoken, signed or written on a particular
occasion) is "pick out" someone an individual person, place, object, or a set of
persons, places, objects, etc. The technical terminology for "pick out" differs a great
deal from one school of linguistics to another. The most widespread term is probably
refer, and a thing "picked out" is a referent, as for example in the work of John Lyons.
In linguistics, the study of reference belongs to pragmatics, the study of language use,
though it is also a matter of great interest to philosophers, especially those wishing to
understand the nature of knowledge, perception and cognition more generally.
The kinds of expressions which can refer (as so defined) are:

a noun phrase of any structure, such as: the taxi in The taxi's waiting outside;
the apple on the table in Bring me the apple on the table; and those five boys
in Those five boys were off school last week. In those languages which, like
English, encode definiteness, REs are typically marked for definiteness. In the
examples given, this is done by the definite article the or the demonstrative
adjective, here those.

a noun-phrase surrogate, i.e. a pronoun, such as it in It's waiting outside and

Bring me it; and they in They were off school last week. The referent of such a
pronoun may vary according to context - e.g. the referent of me depends on
who the speaker is - and this property is technically an instance of deixis.

a proper name, like Sarah, London, The Eiffel Tower, or The Beatles. The
intimate link between proper names and type (1) REs is shown by the definite
article that appears in many of them. In many languages this happens far more
consistently than in English. Proper names are often taken to refer, in
principle, to the same referent independently of the context in which the name
is used and in all possible worlds, i.e. they are in Saul Kripke's terminology
rigid designators.

Referring can take place in a number of ways. Typically, in the case of (1), the RE is
likely to succeed in picking out the referent because the words in the

expression and the way they are combined together give a

true, accurate, description of the referent, in such a way that the
hearer of the expression can recognize the speaker's intention. In the first example, if
the hearer knows what an apple and a table are, and understands the relation
expressed by on, and is aware that the is a signal that an individual thing/person is
intended, s/he can build up the meaning of the expression from the words and
grammar and use it to identify an intended object (often within sight, or at any rate
easily recoverable, but not necessarily). Of course, the speaker may use a mistaken
description and still manage to refer successfully. If I ask you to "Take this plate to the
woman with the glass of vodka", you may take it to the intended person even if,
unbeknown to me, her vodka is really water. On the other hand I may be accurate in
calling it vodka, but you may believe wrongly that it is water, and therefore not
deliver the plate. So accurate reference is not a guarantee of successful reference, and
successful reference does not wholly depend on accurate reference. But naturally
there is a strong positive correlation between them.
Proper names, on the other hand, generally achieve reference irrespective of the
meaning of the words which constitute them (if any are recognizable). If my local pub
is called The Anchor, this is simply a label which functions conversationally with no
appeal to the meaning of the words. If I say, I'm going to the Anchor, I do not mean
I'm going to the device for halting and securing a ship, and you will not necessarily
call such a device to mind when I say this. The Anchor just serves to identify a
particular building. This point is more obvious still with those names like Sarah and
London which have no lexical meaning of their own.
In addition to the (in many languages) grammatically obvious singular and plural
reference, linguists typically distinguish individual or specific reference, exemplified
by each case presented so far, from generic reference, where a singular expression
picks out a type of object (etc.) rather than an individual one, as in The bear is a
dangerous animal. Plural expressions can, of course, be interpreted in the same way,
as in Bears are dangerous animals.
Definite reference to single individuals is usually taken to be the prototypical type of
reference.
Other types of reference recognized by linguists include indefinite as opposed to
definite reference, and collective and distributive reference. Definite referring
expressions refer to an identifiable individual or class (The Dalai Lama; The
Coldstream Guards; the student with the highest marks), whilst indefinite referring

expressions allow latitude in identifying the referent (a corrupt Member of

Parliament; a cat with black ears - where a is to be interpreted as 'any' or 'some actual
but unspecified'). Collective reference is the picking out of the members of a set as a
set, whilst distributive reference is the picking out of the members of a set
individually. The difference may not be marked linguistically, but arrived at by
interpretation in context. Compare Manchester United won again today (where the
reference of Manchester United is to members of the team as a unit), with
Manchester United wear red shirts and black shorts (where the reference of
Manchester United is to the team members as individuals). English allows such
expressions to be ambiguous: compare Manchester United are rich beyond my wildest
dreams.
.

What is extension and intension?

In: Learning Theories [! .]
Answer:
Improve
Extension. The set of all things to which a word or phrase refers; also known as
"denotation." The extension of "U.S. automotive producer" is "Chrysler, Ford,
General Motors."
Intension. The set of qualities of a thing that make a given word or phrase refer to it;
also know as "sense" (and not to be confused with intention, what someone means to
say or do). The intension of "U.S. automobile producer" is "a company engaged in
manufacturing automobiles, with its corporate headquarters in the United States.
Source: http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/ct/ch02/glossary.htm
..

intension and extension, in logic, correlative words

that indicate the reference of a term or concept:
intension indicates the internal content of a term or
concept that constitutes its formal definition and
extension indicates its range of applicability by naming
the particular objects that it denotes. For instance, the
intension of ship as a substantive is vehicle for
conveyance on water, whereas its extension embraces
such things as cargo ships, passenger ships, battleships,
and sailing ships. The distinction between intension and
extension is not the same as that between connotation
and denotation.

Intension
In linguistics, logic, philosophy, and other fields, an intension is any property or
quality or state of affairs connoted by a word, phrase or other symbol. In case of a
word, it is often implied by its definition. The term may also refer to the complete set
of meanings or properties that are implied by a concept, although the term
comprehension is technically more correct for this.
Intension is generally discussed with regard to extension (or denotation). For
example, the intension of a car is the all-inclusive concept of a car, including, for
example, mile-long cars made of chocolate that may not actually exist. But the
extension of a car is all actual instances of cars (past, present, and future), which will
amount to millions or billions of cars, but probably does not include any mile-long
cars made of chocolate.
The meaning of a word can be thought of as the bond between the idea or thing the
word refers to and the word itself. Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure contrasts
three concepts:

the signifiedthe concept or idea that a sign evokes.

the signifierthe "sound image" or string of letters on a page that one
recognizes as a sign.
the referentthe actual thing or set of things a sign refers to.

Intension is analogous to the signified extension to the referent. The intension thus
links the signifier to the sign's extension. Without intension of some sort, words can
have no meaning.
Intension and intensionality (the state of having intension

Extension
In any of several studies that treat the use of signs, for example, linguistics, logic,
mathematics, semantics, and semiotics, the extension of a concept, idea, or sign
consists of the things to which it applies, in contrast with its comprehension or
intension, which consists very roughly of the ideas, properties, or corresponding signs
that are implied or suggested by the concept in question.
In philosophical semantics or the philosophy of language, the extension of a concept
or expression is the set of things it extends to, or applies to, if it is the sort of concept
or expression that a single object by itself can satisfy. (Concepts and expressions of
this sort are monadic or "one-place" concepts and expressions.)
So the extension of the word "dog" is the set of all (past, present and future) dogs in
the world: the set includes Fido, Rover, Lassie, Rex, and so on. The extension of the
phrase "Wikipedia reader" includes each person who has ever read Wikipedia,
including you.

Memory & Cognition

1979, Vol. 7 (1),35-41

In search of referents for nouns

andpronouns
HERBERT H. CLARK and C. J. SENGUL
Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
In comprehending a sentence, people normally try
to identify the objects, events, and states
referred to by its definite noun phrases. In
Experiment 1, subjects took less time
comprehending
a sentence when the referents of such noun
phrases were mentioned one sentence back
than when they were mentioned two or three
sentences back. There appeared to be a
discontinuity
between the first and second sentences back.
Experiments 2 and 3 showed that
it was most likely the first clause back, not the first
sentence back, that was critical. These
findings suggest that, independent of other factors,
the last clause processed grants the
entities it mentions a privileged place in working
memory. They are readily available to be
referred to by nouns and pronouns.
When we hear "she" in an utterance, we normally
feel compelled to identify the entity to which it
refers
before we feel we have understood the utterance
fully.

The speaker, we assurne, had some particular

female in
mind and expected us to identify her uniquely from
what we know at that point in the conversation.
Often,
this means searching memory for a female
mentioned
in the last sentence or two, but at other times it
requires
a more complicated search and inference
(Springston,
1975; Chamiak, Note 1). And what is true for
definite
pronouns like "she" is also true for definite noun
phrases like "the woman." The present study is an
investigation 01' the process by which listeners
search
memory for such referents in the natural course
01'
comprehension.
How listeners identify referents is part 01' the
broader
question 01' how listeners extract the novel
information
conveyed by an utterance and incorporate this
information
into memory. According to one model (Clark &
Haviland, 1974, 1977; Haviland & Clark, 1974), this
is
accomplished in part by the given-new strategy. In
individual sentences, there are structural
properties that
distinguish between given information, that portion
of
the sentence that is supposed to refer to
information

the speaker believes his listeners can identify, and

new
information, that portion that is supposed to
contain
information the speaker believes his listeners do
not yet
know. In the given-new strategy, listeners add the
new
information 01' a statement to memory in three
steps.
First, they identify the given and new information
of
the sentence from its structural cues. Second, they
search memory for a unique referent 01' the given
information-sthat entity (object, state, event, or
process)
to which the given information refers. If they find
no
such referent directly, they add, based on what
they
The research reported here was supported in part
by
Grant MH-20021 from the National Institute of
Mental Health.
We thank Eve V. Clark for comments on earlier
drafts of the
paper.
Copyright 1979 Psychonomic Society, Inc. 35
already do know, a plausible bridging assumption
that
contains the referent. Third, they add the new
information
to memory by attaching it to the referent they
have
just identified or added. A good deal 01' evidence
for

this strategy has been laid out by Clark and

Haviland
(1977; see also Carpenter & Just, 1978; Clark,
1977,
1978; Hupet & l..eBouedec, 1977; Yekovich &
Walker,
1978).
How does the given-new strategy apply to definite
noun phrases and pronouns? When listeners
encounter
"the woman" or "she," they are assumed to treat
this as given information for which they must find a
referent. They then search memory for the unique
entity to which "the woman" or "she" was intended
to refer. When they identify that referent, they
attach
to it the new information being conveyed about
"the
woman" or "she." In those cases where there is
already
in memory a unique entity to which "the woman"
or "she" refers, will listeners ever have difficulty
searching for and identifying it? Clearly, they will,
and for a variety 01' different reasons. In this
paper,
we will examine just one 01' those reasons, the
relative
availability of the referent in working memory.
The availability of a referent in memory ought to
depend on where and how it was mentioned in the
prior
discourse. (We will not consider cases in which the
referent has not been explicitly mentioned in the
prior
discourse ; see Clark, 1977.) Consider this
sequence 01'

three sentences: (1) Yesterday I met a woman

who
had written a book on viruses. (2) She had
studied them for years and years. (3) It was
selling very weIl. The pronoun "she" in
Sentence 2 refers to the woman
mentioned in Sentence 1; its referent seems
easy to
identify. The pronoun "it" in Sentence 3
refers to the
book mentioned in Sentence 1; its referent
seems more difficult to identify. What is the
difference? Informally,
it looks as if a referent is readily identifiable
if it was
mentioned one sentence back. It seems less
available
for identification if it was mentioned two
sentences
back. Notice how much easier "it" becomes
when
0090-502X/79/0 10035-07$00.95/0