What Isa Referent

Context from CulturallySensitive

In the computing context I cross over between the UnixCulture and TheNotUnixCulture. I find this both fascinating and frustrating. -- JohnFletcher

referent (n) something referred to; the object of a reference the first term in a proposition; the term to which other terms relate something that refers; a term that refers to another term

This is from DictOrg. "Referent" is an actual German word, and it left me confused before looking it up. -- JuergenHermann

I have also found it in an English dictionary of 1972. -- JohnFletcher

This is a good example of how context can get lost on Wiki. The meaning of John's original is changed as the referent is changed in an unexpected direction. -- RichardDrake

Please would you define referent? It clearly isn't the person (referer?). --JohnFletcher

The normal linguistic usage is: you have the person responsible for an utterance (what you call the referer), and a reference within it signifying a referent. Think writer of a program, a variable and the object it contains. But not for long. (And maybe that's the problem!) See the initial quote in ReferentsOnWiki. -- rd

ReferentsOnWiki also refers to the referent as the pages referred to. I think one conclusion I draw is to see any Wiki page as a sheet of paper which anyone can write on, rather like the back of an envelope. The importance is the content, but it can be put down anywhere, even somewhere with a title which is not relevant. This discussion is becoming a case in point. If it is important it needs to be put where people can find it, and that is the purpose of the page titles. Long ago in teaching programming I suggested the following as a legal practice to be avoided (in FORTRAN as it happens)

FOUR = 5.

-- JohnFletcher

See also BadVariableNames, for a story about an production autopilot program, where the constant "FIVE_DEGREES" had been adjusted, over time, to have a value something closer to 4.5 degrees. And here we thought that LifeCriticalSystems shouldn't suffer from these problems.

You're right that I am proposing an extension of the term referent on Wiki to include pages linked to within an utterance. That's where some things start to get difficult. (As if semantics wasn't difficult enough already.) -- RichardDrake

I was genuinely asking for the content of the word referent, which I now take it to be the matter referred to, whether on the page or somewhere else. I find this useful. I started here with WikiWiki some years ago (See my home page for this). I now use wiki type software not for communication, but for personal storage and cross reference of ideas. I regard being able to get back to an idea as important, maybe in a context different from the one I originally had to put it in. This is even more true on WikiWiki where more than one person is involved. That is why I like and use categories. I put the category book into any page I see which describes a book. That enriches WikiWiki for searching for books, over a period of time. So one important idea for improving the connectivity of Wiki is to have pages which have titles which reflect the referents in the page, and to add pages to provide those handles when they aren't there. I will tend to do this for the pages that interest me. -- JohnFletcher

It is the object or matter referred to, right. It is a useful term to think about for Wiki. I hope!

For the little it's probably worth, my current thought is that a Referent in a speech act is what you think you're thinking of. Thus, what you utter need not exist, it need not be named right, etc. If I refer to some discussion on What-Is-Referent (mispelling intentional), and that discussion actually isn't there, it's on ReferentsOnWiki, and I also got the attribution wrong and I also misunderstood the person's writing, I am still referring to that paragraph which I misunderstood.

When you drag me to that page and I see how wrong my speaking was, I shift either or both of my utterance or my interpretation of what I was referring to (my interpretation of my referrent).

So understanding someone's Referent is just as likely to be faulty as understanding anything else they write/utter.

Of course, as the French existentialists pointed out, what I am saying is not what I mean, because I don't myself know what I really want to mean.... so this contribution will need some cleaning up over the decades... but this is the best I can get you at this time. --AlistairCockburn

(p.s. you can see why I don't worry too much about the accuracy of Referents on wiki :-)

I think a lot of the problems in this area are caused by issues of change (and therefore identity). At some point the changes to a page mean it should no longer be considered the same page. Having immutable pages (and some kind of version control), helps in that it gives you more tools for dealing with the problem, but it doesn't make the problem go away.

You're right about change being the problem but it's also the glory of Wiki.

May I suggest we have two problems discussing this subject. First, we're programmers and we don't know much, if anything, about modern linguistics. It's a subject that should be taught in high schools, many feel, but mostly isn't, unless you count parts of Latin and Greek. Secondly, we're programmers who can think of ways to change the system at the drop of a hat. I suggest we learn some linguistics (by introducing some people that really know about semantics) and stick with the difficult analysis of the extraordinary socio-linguistic phenomenon called Wiki. The man who started it has made remarkably few changes to it in 6 years. So now we have some real data, some real evidence to get our teeth into (or at least get the linguists teeth into). -- RichardDrake

Jim is Bob's uncle" -- both "Jim" and "Bob's uncle" refer to the same person, and they are both references, however only Jim'' is the referent. Would that be both succinct and accurate?

Or how about:

  reference = interpret(reality) ; 
  referent = express(reference) ;

  differance = reality - referent ;

What we need is a WikiReferee?, whose job it is to decide what referent a reference refers to, whenever there's a doubt. And to throw little red flags on the ground when ThreadMode has been committed.

Hmm, it would be nice if things were this simple. I think there can be a difference between the words someone uses or someone else hears (expression); what they hope (or what someone else hopes) they "mean" (content); and what part of the "real world" they correspond to (the referent).

I've seen a couple of papers somewhere trying to apply this to patterns and object-oriented design --- an object in a program is an expression that refers to some referent in the real world; programmers reading the program build up an idea that the program objects refers to the world object --- this is the content. --- JamesNoble

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