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A referring expression (RE), in linguistics, is any noun phrase, or surrogate for a noun phrase, whose function in discourse is to ''identify'' some individual object (thing, being, event...) The technical terminology for ''identify'' differs a great deal from one school of linguistics to another. The most widespread term is probably ''refer'', and a thing identified is a ''referent'', as for example in the work of John Lyons. In linguistics, the study of reference relations belongs to pragmatics, the study of language use, though it is also a matter of great interest to philosophers, especially those wishing to understand the nature of knowledge, perception and cognition more generally. Various devices can be used for reference: determiners, pronouns, proper names... Reference relations can be of different kinds; referents can be in a "real" or imaginary world, in discourse itself, and they may be singular, plural, or collective. == Kinds of Referring expressions == The kinds of expressions which can refer (as so defined) are: * 1. a noun phrase of any structure, such as: ''the taxi'' in ''The taxi's waiting outside''; ''the apple on the table'' in ''Bring me the apple on the table''; and ''those five boys'' in ''Those five boys were off school last week''. In those languages which, like English, encode definiteness, REs are typically marked for definiteness. In the examples given, this is done by the definite article ''the'' or the demonstrative adjective, here ''those''. * 2. a noun-phrase surrogate, i.e. a pronoun, such as ''it'' in ''It's waiting outside'' and ''Bring me it''; and ''they'' in ''They were off school last week.'' The referent of such a pronoun may vary according to context - e.g. the referent of ''me'' depends on who the speaker is - and this property is technically an instance of deixis. * 3. a proper name, like ''Sarah'', ''London'', ''The Eiffel Tower'', or ''The Beatles''. The intimate link between proper names and type (1) REs is shown by the definite article that appears in many of them. In many languages this happens far more consistently than in English. Proper names are often taken to refer, in principle, to the same referent independently of the context in which the name is used and in all possible worlds, i.e. they are in Saul Kripke's terminology rigid designators. 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 together 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 the first example, if the hearer knows what an apple and a table are, and understands the relation expressed by ''on'', and is aware that ''the'' is a signal that an individual thing/person is intended, s/he can build up the meaning of the expression from the words and grammar and use it to identify an intended object (often within sight, or at any rate easily recoverable, but not necessarily). Of course, the speaker may use a mistaken description and still manage to refer successfully. If I ask you to "Take this plate to the woman with the glass of vodka", you may take it to the intended person even if, unbeknown to me, her vodka is really water. On the other hand I may be accurate in calling it vodka, but you may believe wrongly that it is water, and therefore not deliver the plate. So accurate reference is not a guarantee of successful reference, and successful reference does not wholly depend on accurate reference. But naturally there is a strong positive correlation between them. Proper names, on the other hand, generally achieve reference irrespective of the meaning of the words which constitute them (if any are recognizable). If my local pub is called ''The Anchor'', this is simply a label which functions conversationally with no appeal to the meaning of the words. If I say, ''I'm going to the Anchor'', I do not mean ''I'm going to the device for halting and securing a ship'', and you will not necessarily call such a device to mind when I say this. ''The Anchor'' just serves to identify a particular building. This point is more obvious still with those names like ''Sarah'' and ''London'' which have no lexical meaning of their own. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「referring expression」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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