REFERENCE AND INFERENCE

A PAPER

Submitted to fulfill assignment on Pragmatics

Arranged by:

Mohammad Soni (147835129)

Class of P2TK

PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN BAHASA DAN SASTRA INGGRIS

PROGRAM PASCASARJANA

UNIVERSITAS NEGERI SURABAYA

2014

REFERENCE AND INFERENCE

A. Introduction

We communicate through language as it is a means of communication. In communicating

each other, we share and respond the language that is subsequently understood each other. The

speaker, consequently, should apply such the understandable language that results the listener to

receive the intended meanings shared. Communication clearly depends on not only recognizing

the meaning of words in an utterance, but also recognizing what speakers mean by their

utterances. The messages uttered by the speakers result in what interpretation would be.

Interpretation on them could vary. To confine what interpretations are, both the speaker and

listener should have the same ideas, person, or things that could refer to. This is the function of

reference. Reference is normally defined as an act which on some occasion of utterance may be

used to refer .

states that under the heading of reference we encounter one of the most fundamental and

vital aspects of language and language use, namely, the relations between language, as a medium

of communication between human beings, and the world, about which we communicate. One of

the most basic things that we do when we communicate through language is to pick out entities

in the world and ascribe properties to them, or indicate relations between them. Reference, then,

is a kind of verbal “pointing to” or “picking out” of a certain object or individual that one wishes

to say something about .

Reference and inference are parts of pragmatics. Pragmatics is concerned with the study

of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener or a reader . It,

therefore, means that the utterances used indeed affect how they understand and interpret

precisely what they mean. In pragmatics, we discuss much more on “messages” and “the

language users” . There are many ways of reference in terms of pragmatics. In this paper, the

writer will explain about reference and inference, describe type the reference and other subtopics

which are related to the reference.

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B. Reference and Inference

define reference as an idea that is used to localize and objectify a certain type of

“aboutness” in a reasonable clear and intuitive way. Further, he explains that the focus of a

theory of reference has been on those elements of a sentence or utterance which most clearly

displays the intuitive phenomenon of reference, leaving aside the subsequent questions for

resolution within a more precisely articulated theory. In line with that, accounts for the function

of reference as the act of using language to refer the entities in the context. In reference, the

speaker uses linguistic forms, known as referring expressions, to enable the hearer to identify the

entity being referred to, which is in turn known as the referent. A successful act of reference

depends more on the listener’s ability to recognize what we mean than on the listener’s

‘dictionary’ knowledge of a word we use . Reference is, then, clearly tied to the speaker’s goals

(to identify something) and the speaker’s belief (can the listener be expected to know that

particular something?) in the use of language. In reference, there is also a basic ‘intention-to-

identity’ and a ‘recognition-of-intention’ collaboration at work.

For successful reference to occur, it is also necessary to recognize inference. An

inference is additional information used by the listener to create a connection between what is

said and what must be meant. 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, an expression to identity thing or person. explains that the hearer

uses inference in recovering what is communicated. Besides, in each case the inferences, the

hearer makes depend on contextual information – that is, information which is not derived from

the meaning of the words uttered but from her/his knowledge of the world and the hearer also

makes appeal to the assumption that the speaker has met or has tried to meet certain standards.

The roles of inference are divided into the speaker and the hearer. For the speaker, he or she has

to intend to identify something and has some knowledge of what the listener knows. In other

hand, the listener has to infer from the speaker’s utterance that the speaker intends the listener to

identify something and to figure out what intended thing is. Therefore, to make reference

succeed, it is very necessary for both the speaker and hearer share the mutual knowledge. It is

some knowledge that the speaker and listener both know. If it is so, the reference and inference

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work successfully. Reference and inference cannot be separated; it is simply because they are

tied to another. If the hearer misleads to infer the intended meaning, the context that is expected

would lose.

C. Types of Reference

As in explained by , reference that can be form of expression is called referring

expression as an expression which on some occasion of utterance may be used to refer. There are

many ways in which a speaker may be said to refer, and, consequently, many different kinds of

referring expressions. For example, a speaker may refer either to an individual (singular

reference) or to a class of individuals (definite reference) or he may not have a specific referent

in mind (indefinite reference). explains that referring expression can be proper nouns, noun

phrases which are definite, or indefinite, and pronouns. The choice of one type of referring

expression rather that another seems to be based, to a large extent, on what the speaker assumes

the listener already knows.

Reference is divided into three categories. They are definite reference, indefinite

reference, and generic reference . Definite reference, also called singular definite reference, is the

most crucial for the functioning of language. The features of definite reference can be set as

follows: the intended referential target is necessarily a particular entity, the speaker should be

able, on demand, to give information that for them distinguishes the entity from all other entities,

and the act of reference brings with it to the hearer an implicit assurance that they have enough

information to uniquely identify the referent. There are many types of definite reference, for

example: proper names (Jake, Clare), deictic pronouns and determiners (this man, that girl),

personal pronouns (he, she), definite descriptions (the girl, the man).

On the other hand, the essence of indefinite reference is that the identity of the referent is

not germane to the message: that is, nothing hinges on the individual features of the referent only

the class features indicated are presented as relevant. Notice that this has nothing to do with

whether or not either speaker or hearer is in fact able to effect a unique identification of the

referent, for example: a man, a word, a book.

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The generic reference might the last type of reference as explained by . Now consider the

following sentences: (a.) the tiger is a friendly beast, (b.) a tiger is a friendly beast, (c.) tigers are

friendly beasts. All three have readings which involve what is called generic reference, that is,

reference to a class of referents. All of the above predicate friendliness as a general characteristic

of the members of the class of tigers. There are two sorts of proposition involving generic

reference as argument: either something is predicated of the whole class referred to, or

something is predicated of each member of the class. These two readings available under the

heading of generic reference are known as the collective reading and the distributed reading,

respectively. Sentences (a), (b), and (c) have different affinities for these two uses

D. Referential and Attribute Uses

It is important to recognize that not all referring expressions have identifiable physical

referents. Indefinite noun phrases can be used to identify a physically present entity, but they can

also be used to describe entities that are assumed to exist, but are unknown or are not existed.

As explained by , Attribute use can be defined as an entity that is known to the speaker

only in terms of its descriptive properties. For example: He wants to marry a woman with lots of

money. The word ‘a’ could be replaced by ‘any’ in this case whose meaning is

‘whoever/whatever fits the description. In other hand, taking the same sentence example, in

referential use, the speaker actually has a person in mind and, instead of using her name or some

other descriptions; he chooses the expression, perhaps because he thinks the hearer would be

more interested that this woman has lots of money than that she has a name. Therefore,

referential use can be defined as an entity that is known by the speaker, but he uses other

descriptions to make his expression more interesting or fascinated to be uttered.

The point of this distinction between referential and attribute uses is that expressions

themselves cannot be treated as having reference, but are, or are not, ‘invested’ with referential

function in a context by a speaker or writer. Speakers often invited us to assume, via attributive

uses, that we can identify what they’re talking about, even when the entity or individual

described may not exist .

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E. The Role of Co-Text

Co-text deals with the contextual context or the context of the text itself. 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 co-text clearly limits the range of possible interpretations we might have for a

word. Co-text is simply a 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. Therefore, Reference, then,

is not simply a relationship between the meaning of a word or phrase and an object or person in

the world. It is a social act, in which the speaker assumes that the word or phrase chosen to

identify an object or person will be interpreted as the speaker intended .

F. Exophora and Endophora

Exophoric reference can be defined as a reference when it is the first mention of the

referent, in the sense that there is no previous mention of the reference in the preceding text .

Thus, exophora is dependent on the context outside the text. For example:

DM: I went with Francesca and David.

AF: Uhuh?

DM: Francesca’s room-mate and Alice’s – a friend of Alice’s from London. There were six of

us. Yeah we did a lot of hill walking.

The ‘us’ and ‘we’ are not exophoric because they refer back to DM, Francesca, David,

Francesca’s room-mate, the friend of Alice’s, and Michelle, who are all mentioned elsewhere in

the text. The nouns ‘Francesca’ and ‘David’ are used as exophoric reference because they point

to people who are in the cultural context and are not referred to previously in the text.

The reference of the ‘us’ and ‘we’, on the other hand, which refer back to the previously

referents mentioned is called endophoric reference. There are two types of endophora which are

called anaphora and cataphora.

To make it clear, let’s take a look to the example:

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We saw a funny home video about a boy washing a puppy in a small bath. The puppy

started struggling and shaking and the boy got really wet. When he let go, it jumped out

of the bath and ran away.

In this type of referential relationship, the second (or subsequent) referring expression is

an example of anaphora (‘referring back’). The first mention is called the antecedent. So, in the

example, a boy, a puppy, and a small bath are antecedents and the puppy, the boy, he, it, and the

bath are anaphoric expressions. Anaphora can be defined as subsequent reference to an already

introduced entity whose function is to maintain reference . If no linguistic expression is present,

it is 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 than is

said.

In the other hand, cataphora is the opposite – pronouns link forward of a referent in the

text that follows. This is an example:

Students (not unlike yourselves) compelled to buy paperback copies of his novels –

notably the first, Travel Light, though there has lately been some academic interest in his

more surreal and ‘existential’ and perhaps even ‘anarchistic’ second novel, Brother Pig –

or encountering some essay from When the Saints in a shiny heavy anthology of mid-

century literature costing $12.50, imagine that Henry Bech, like thousands less famous

that he, is rich. He is not. ((Updike 1970:11 quoted by )

The phrases of ‘copies of his novels’ are introduced before we know who ‘he’ is. It is

only several lines later that we learnt that the possessive adjective ‘his’ links forward to the

proper nouns ‘Henry Bech’ in the text that comes after. This is an example of cataphoric

expression. As we can see, whereas anaphora refers back, cataphora refers forward. It is a

stylistic choice, to keep the reader in suspense as to who is being talked about.

G. Conclusion

Reference as an act by which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a listener (or

reader) to identify something. To perform an act of reference, we can use proper nouns

(Chomsky, Jennifer, and Whiskas), other nouns in phrases (a writer, my friend, the cat) or

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pronouns (he, she, it). We sometimes assume that these words identify someone or something

uniquely, but it is more accurate to say that, for each word or phrase, there is a ‘range of

reference’. A successful act of reference depends more on the listener’s ability to recognize what

we mean than on the listener’s ‘dictionary’ knowledge of a word we use. Reference, then, is not

simply a relationship between the meaning of a word or phrase and an object or person in the

world. It is a social act, in which the speaker assumes that the word or phrase chosen to identify

an object or person will be interpreted as the speaker intended.

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REFERENCES

Blakemore, Diane. 1992. Understanding Utterances: An Introduction to Pragmatics: Blackwell

Oxford.

Cruse, Alan. 2000. Meaning in Language. United States: Oxford University Press.

Cutting, Joan. 2002. Pragmatics and Discourse. London: Routledge Taylor&Frances Group.

Horn, Laurence, & Ward, Gergory. 2006. Handbook of Pragmatics (Vol. 26): John Wiley &

Sons.

Mey, Jacob L. 2001. Introduction to Pragmatics: Blackwell.

Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Yule, George. 2006. The Study of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.