referents

A referent is the actual object, person, event, or idea that a linguistic expression designates in a given context. In semantics and philosophy of language, the referent is the entity to which a term or phrase corresponds in a situation of use. For example, the referent of the name “Venus” is the planet Venus, while the referent of “the tallest building in the city” depends on which building holds that status at the time of utterance. Some expressions may have intuitive referents for some listeners and not for others, or may have no referent at all in a given context, as with certain presuppositional or empty names.

Context plays a crucial role in determining referents, especially for pronouns and indexicals. Words like I, here, now, this, and that derive their referents from the speaker, time, place, and discourse situation. Anaphoric pronouns rely on prior referents established in the discourse to resolve their meaning. Cross-linguistic variation can also affect how referents are established, such as differing strategies for marking deictic space or referencing.

Theoretical accounts of referents fall into several positions. Direct reference theory holds that proper names refer directly to their objects, with referents fixed by social and historical usage rather than descriptive content. Descriptive theories argue that names convey a bundle of properties or a description that uniquely identifies the referent. Kripke’s causal-historical view emphasizes that a name’s referent is determined by a chain of communications beginning with an initial baptism. Fregean perspectives distinguish sense (how a reference is presented) from reference (the object itself), highlighting that expressions with the same referent can differ in cognitive content.

Referents also matter in formal semantics and logic, where truth conditions depend on the existence and identification of the referent within a model or possible world.