inadequacy of descriptive theories to account for the mechanism of reference led to the emergence of the direct reference theory. this theory, however, has its own problems. if the only component of the meaning of a proper name is its referent, then how is it that the substitution of two co-referent proper names in propositional attitude sentences changes the truth value of the sentence? the pr...

In this paper it is shown that a definite description refers to a given discourse referent if the descriptive content is deaccented. But if there is an accent on the descriptive content, a novel referent is introduced. Starting from a uniqueness view of definiteness, a distinction between two uses of definite descriptions is proposed: ‘Given definites’ represent identity anaphors exploiting the...

In this paper we discuss the treatment of variables in dynamic seman tics Referent systems are introduced as a exible mechanism for working with variables In a referent system we carefully distinguish the variables themselves both from the machinery by which we manipulate them their names and from the information that we store in them their values It is shown that the referent systems provide a...

In this paper we discuss the treatment of variables in dynamic semantics. Referent systems are introduced as a exible mechanism for working with variables. In a referent system we carefully distinguish the variables themselves both from the machinery by which we manipulate them|their names|and from the information that we store in them|their values. It is shown that the referent systems provide...

BACKGROUND Schizophrenia is characterized by abnormalities in referential communication, which may be linked to more general deficits in proactive cognitive control. We used event-related potentials to probe the timing and nature of the neural mechanisms engaged as people with schizophrenia linked pronouns to their preceding referents during word-by-word sentence comprehension. METHODS We mea...

The process of pairing words with their referents in the real world is often ambiguous; the same word may refer to different objects, the same object may be referred to by different words, and there may just be insufficient environmental cues to assist us in the process. Thus, how is it that adults are able to go about this, particularly when the word-referent pairings are not constant? Three d...

Previous research on lexical development has aimed to identify the factors that enable accurate initial word-referent mappings based on the assumption that the accuracy of initial word-referent associations is critical for word learning. The present study challenges this assumption. Adult English speakers learned an artificial language within a cross-situational learning paradigm. Visual fixati...

When a reader encounters a noun, she tends to rapidly associate the noun with a mental referent (representation of entity in question). Our computational model confirms that a memory-based account is sufficient to account for a high rate of success at preliminary referent retrieval. Definite noun phrases ("The dog") can be used anaphorically to refer to referents already mentioned in the text, ...