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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 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 Noam Chomsky's government and binding theory in linguistics, an R-expression (short for "referring expression" (the linked article explains the different, broader usage in other theories of linguistics) or "referential expression") is a noun phrase that refers to a specific real or imaginary entity.
Referring expression generation (REG) is the subtask of natural language generation (NLG) that received most scholarly attention. While NLG is concerned with the conversion of non-linguistic information into natural language, REG focuses only on the creation of referring expressions (noun phrases) that identify specific entities called targets .
A referent (/ ˈ r ɛ f ə r ə n t / REF-ər-ənt) is a person or thing to which a name – a linguistic expression or other symbol – refers.For example, in the sentence Mary saw me, the referent of the word Mary is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken of, while the referent of the word me is the person uttering the sentence.
The theory classifies nominals according to two features, [±anaphor] and [±pronominal], which are binary. The binding characteristics of a nominal are determined by the values of these features, either plus or minus. Thus, a nominal that is [-anaphor, -pronominal] is an R-expression (referring expression), such as a common noun or a proper name.
Since the phrase "some dog is annoying" is not a referring expression, according to Russell's theory, it need not refer to a mysterious non-existent entity. Furthermore, the law of excluded middle need not be violated (i.e. it remains a law), because "some dog is annoying" comes out true: there is a thing that is both a dog and annoying.
One of the fundamental puzzles that Russell hopes to resolve with the theory of descriptions is the problem of non-referring expressions or, as they are now called, negative existentials. He finally explains how his theory resolves this problem after invoking a distinction between what he calls primary and secondary occurrences of denoting phrases.
The first object in this relation is said to refer to the second object. It is called a name for the second object. The next object, the one to which the first object refers, is called the referent of the first object. A name is usually a phrase or expression, or some other symbolic representation. Its referent may be anything – a material ...