What is the difference between referential and attributive uses?

What is the difference between referential and attributive uses?

But in referential uses, it is implied that some particular object o is F, whereas in attributive uses it is implied that something or other is F without this being implied of any particular object.

What is attributive reference?

In that case, ‘any’ could replace the indefinite article ‘a’. This is called attributive use, meaning ‘whoever/whatever fits the description’. It is different from referential use where the referent is a specific person. Exercise on referential and attributive uses.

What is referential use?

Referential use is the use that a speaker makes of a definite noun phrase when he uses the content of the noun phrase to identify an individual.

What is the relationship between names and referents?

A referent (/ˈrɛfərənt/) 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.

What is the attributive use?

Attributive use is the use that a speaker makes of a definite noun phrase to say something about whatever fits the description of the noun phrase.

What is an attributive adjective?

Adjectives in the first position – before the noun – are called ATTRIBUTIVE adjectives. Those in the second position – after the noun – are called PREDICATIVE adjectives. Notice that predicative adjectives do not occur immediately after the noun.

What is reference and inference?

Since successful reference does not only depend on the speaker but also on the listener, we have to include the notion of inference, which denotes the process of decoding the pragmatic meaning of an utterance. In order to do so, the listener uses additional knowledge to make sense of what has not been explicitly said.

Can the same expression have different referents?

One of the characteristic features of human language is the absence, in general, of a one-to-one relation between noun phrases and referents. Conversely, the same noun phrase can have different referents.

What is the difference between inference and reference?

What I understand is that the word Inference means coming to a conclusion after observing something based on our knowledge, whereas, reference is referring to something that was found, gained or taken from something else.