Semantics: a coursebook, second edition

PA RT  T WO
From reference . . .
60
Feedback
(1) Yes (2) No (3) Yes (4) Yes (5) No
Comment Language is used for talking about things in the real world, like parrots,
paper-clips, babies, etc. All of these things exist. But the things we can talk
about and the things that exist are not exactly the same. We shall now
explore the way in which language creates unreal worlds and allows us to
talk about non-existent things. We start from the familiar notion of
reference.
Our basic, and very safe, de
finition of reference (Unit 3) was as a
relationship between part of an utterance and a thing in the world. But often
we use words in a way which suggests that a relationship exactly like reference
holds between a part of an utterance and non-existent things. The classic case
is that of the word unicorn.
Practice (1) Do unicorns exist in the real world?
Yes / No
(2) In which two of the following contexts are unicorns most 
frequently mentioned? Circle your answer.
(a) in fairy stories
(b) in news broadcasts
(c) in philosophical discussions about reference
(d) in scienti
fic text books
(3) Is it possible to imagine worlds di
fferent in certain ways 
from the world we know actually to exist?
Yes / No
(4) In fairy tale and science 
fiction worlds is everything 
di
fferent from the world we know?
Yes / No
(5) In the majority of fairy tales and science 
fiction stories that 
you know, do the 
fictional characters discourse with each other
according to the same principles that apply in real life?
Yes / No
(6) Do fairy tale princes, witches, etc. seem to refer in their 
utterances to things in the world?
Yes / No
Feedback
(1) No (2) (a) and (c) (3) Yes (4) No, otherwise we could not comprehend 
them. (5) Yes (6) Yes
Comment Semantics is concerned with the meanings of words and sentences and it
would be an unpro
fitable digression to get bogged down in questions of what
exists and what doesn’t. We wish to avoid insoluble disagreements between
atheist and theist semanticists, for example, over whether one could refer to
God. To avoid such problems, we adopt a broad interpretation of the notion
referring expression (see Unit 4) so that any expression that can be used to
refer to any entity in the real world or in any imaginary world will be called a
referring expression.

U N I T   6
Predicates, referring expressions, and universe of discourse
61
Practice According to this view of what counts as a referring expression, are the
following possible referring expressions, i.e. could they be used in utterances
to refer (either to real or to 
fictitious entities)?
(1) God
Yes / No
(2) and
Yes / No
(3) Moses
Yes / No
(4) that unicorn
Yes / No
Feedback
(1) Yes (2) No (3) Yes (4) Yes
Comment Notice that we only let our imagination stretch to cases where the things in
the world are di
fferent; we do not allow our imagination to stretch to cases
where the principles of the structure and use of language are di
fferent. To do
so would be to abandon the object of our study. So we insist (as in (2) above)
that the English conjunction and, for example, could never be a referring
expression.
The case of unicorns was relatively trivial. Now we come to some rather
di
fferent cases.
Practice (1) If unicorns existed, would they be physical objects?
Yes / No
(2) Do the following expressions refer to physical objects?
(a) Christmas Day 1980
Yes / No
(b) one o’clock in the morning
Yes / No
(c) when Eve was born
Yes / No
(d) 93 million miles
Yes / No
(e) the distance between the Earth and the Sun
Yes / No
(f) ‘God Save the Queen’
Yes / No
(g) the British national anthem
Yes / No
(h) eleven hundred
Yes / No
(i) one thousand one hundred
Yes / No
Feedback
(1) Yes; it’s di
fficult to conceive of them in any other way. (2) (a)–(i) No
Comment So far we have mainly kept to examples of reference to physical objects, like
John, my chair, the cat, and Cairo. What are we to make of expressions like
tomorrow and the British national anthem, which cannot possibly be said to
refer to physical objects? It is in fact reasonable to envisage our notion of
reference in such a way that we can call these referring expressions also,
because language uses these expressions in many of the same ways as it uses
the clear cases of referring expressions.

Even though expressions like tomorrow, the British national anthem, eleven
hundred, the distance between the Earth and the Sun, etc. do not indicate
physical objects, language treats these expressions in a way exactly parallel to
referring expressions. We call them referring expressions along with John, the
roof, and Cairo. We say that the British national anthem is used to refer to a

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