CHAPTER 3: REFERENCE AND INFERENCE

REFERENCE: is an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or
reader, to identify something.

REFERING EXPRESSIONS:

 Proper Nouns
 Definite Nouns
 Indefinite Nouns
 Pronouns

Not all referring expressions have identifiable physical referents.

1. Indefinite noun phrases can be used to identify a physically present entity,

2. They can also be used to describe entities that are assumed to exist, but are unknown,

3. Entities that, as far as we know, do not exist.

FOR EXAMPLES:

a) There’s a man waiting for you.

b) He wants to marry a woman with lots of money.

c) We would love to find a nine- foot-tall basketball player.

 Attributive Use: This is sometimes called an attributive use, meaning 'whoever/whatever

fits the description'

FOR EXAMPLE:
  A man waiting for you

 Referential Use: a specific person is referred to, although his/her name or some other
description is not used.

FOR EXAMPLE:

 A woman with lots of money

Context and co – text:

CLASSIFICATION OF REFERENCES:

 Anaphoric Reference and Antecedent:

  Cataphora: A cataphoric reference unit refers to another unit that is introduced later
on in the text/speech.

For Example:

I turned the corner and almost stepped on it.

There was a large snake in the middle of the path .

 Zero Anaphora or Ellipsis:

For example:

So…what happened?
Um…I’m not sure that’s true.
…sure.
You went to the restaurant. And…?
But I thought we were meeting on Tuesday…?

Some examples of ellipsis in which words are omitted because they are unnecessary.

My aunt waited until Eliza sighed and then said:

“Ah, well, he’s gone to a better world.”
Eliza sighed again and bowed her head in assent. My aunt fingered the stem of her wine-
glass before sipping a little.
“Did he…peacefully?” she asked.
“Oh, quite peacefully, ma’am,” said Eliza. “You couldn’t tell when the breath went out of
him. He had a beautiful death, God be praised.”
“And everything…?”
“Father O’Rourke was in with him a Tuesday and anointed him and prepared him and all.”
(“The Sisters” from Dubliners by James Joyce)

INTERFERENCE

In inference, we must have the object / situation so that we are able to draw
conclusion and understanding.
For example:
a)You may observe that a person is running from a shop that may cause you to infer that he robbed
it and is trying to get away.

It is easy to infer incorrectly so we need to get all the facts.

 CONCLUSION:

THE ANAPHORIC CONNECTION:

 It requires inference to make sense

Eg :

I just rented a house. The kitchen is really big.

Here, inference is: if x has a house, then x has a kitchen.

 Inference depends on assumed knowledge

Eg. :

We had Chardonnay last night. The wine was the best part.

Here, inference is that Chardonnay is a kind of wine.

 Anaphor and antecedent don´t need to be in grammatical agreement if the inference is

logically made.

For example:

The bus came on time, but he didn’t stop.

Here, ‘he’ stands for the bus driver in connection to the word ´bus´.