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The distinction between denotation and connotation can be made in textual analysis and the existence of dictionaries is used to support the argument that the sign system begins with a simple meaning that is then glossed as new usages are developed.
The philosopher John Stuart Mill was one of the earliest modern advocates of a direct reference theory beginning in 1843. [4] In his A System of Logic Mill introduced a distinction between what he called "connotation" and "denotation". Connotation is a relation between a name (singular or general) and one or more attributes.
"On Denoting" is an essay by Bertrand Russell.It was published in the philosophy journal Mind in 1905. In it, Russell introduces and advocates his theory of denoting phrases, according to which definite descriptions and other "denoting phrases ... never have any meaning in themselves, but every proposition in whose verbal expression they occur has a meaning."
In semiotics, signified and signifier (French: signifié and signifiant) are the two main components of a sign, where signified is what the sign represents or refers to, known as the "plane of content", and signifier which is the "plane of expression" or the observable aspects of the sign itself.
Reference itself captures the relationship between the referent and the word or phrase used by the speaker. For referring expressions, the denotation of the phrase is most likely the phrase's referent. For content words, the denotation of the word can refer to any object, real or imagined, to which the word could be applied. [2]
In formal semantics and philosophy of language, a definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun.The definite description is proper if X applies to a unique individual or object.
In addition to the singular and plural reference (in many languages grammatically obvious), 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 rather than an individual one, as in The bear is a dangerous animal.
In analytic philosophy and computer science, referential transparency and referential opacity are properties of linguistic constructions, [a] and by extension of languages. A linguistic construction is called referentially transparent when for any expression built from it, replacing a subexpression with another one that denotes the same value [b] does not change the value of the expression.