ABSTRACT
Reference may be the most basic of all semantic relations. It is the relation that an expression (in a particular context) bears to the thing (or things) for which it stands. (From here on, reference to contexts is suppressed unless suppression is apt to cause confusion.) The clearest examples of this relation in natural language are those involving the bare demonstratives ‘this’ and ‘that’. When one says, gesturing to the coffee in one’s cup, “This is good and strong,” the expression ‘this’ refers to the coffee in the cup. Similarly, when I say, indicating Seattle, “That’s my hometown,” the expression ‘that’ refers to Seattle. Here are some other natural (which is not to say uncontroversial) examples of the reference relation: The proper name ‘Socrates’ refers to (or in other terminology designates or denotes) the philosopher Socrates; the definite description ‘the philosopher executed for corrupting the youth of Athens’ refers to him too; and the pronoun ‘I’ (in a suitable context) refers to me. The expressions in the five examples just given are all naturally thought of as singular terms, terms whose fundamental semantic role is to refer to a single individual. Paradigmatic singular terms are the individual constants and variables of formal logic. Because the notion of reference finds its natural home in the relation between expressions for single individuals and the individuals themselves, the bulk of the philosophical work on reference has been concerned with singular terms or expressions that are at least arguably singular terms.
