Reference Reference 1. Definition • Reference is the relationship which holds between words (nominal elements) and things. E.g. : The word “table” refers to what all of us can identify as a table. • Referencing is not what an expression does, but rather it is what we as speaker or writers of language do. E.g.: I’m looking for my son . He has curly hair and round face. Have you seen him ? • The speaker uses “my son”, “he”, “him” to refer to one person. 2. Sense and reference • The German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege proposed a distinction to be made between the reference of a word, which is the object designed, and the sense of a word. An example offered by Frege: • Is the evening star the evening star? The answer is obviously “yes”, then he substituted the morning star to produce a new question: • Is the evening star the morning star? Most people would say yes, based on their experience rather than the meaning of the expressions. • Some phrases may have sense but no reference. For example: - The present King of China is bald. • Sense and reference are generally interdependent in that one would not normally know the other without having at least some knowledge of the other. • The expression that refers to someone or something in a context is called referring expression. There may exist a number of referring expression for one and the same referent. • E.g.: Mrs. Margaret Thatcher can be referred to as: The Iron Lady, The British Prime Minister of the 1980s, or the Leader of the Conservative Party of Britain.