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A referent (/ ˈ r ɛ f ə r ə n t / REF-ər-ənt) is a person or thing to which a name – a linguistic expression or other symbol – refers.For example, in the sentence Mary saw me, the referent of the word Mary is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken of, while the referent of the word me is the person uttering the sentence.
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 or person is intended, they 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 ...
The most common honorifics in modern English are usually placed immediately before a person's name. Honorifics used (both as style and as form of address) include, in the case of a man, "Mr." (irrespective of marital status), and, in the case of a woman, previously either of two depending on marital status: "Miss" if unmarried and "Mrs." if married, widowed, or divorced; more recently, a third ...
Usable as a common word: Pierre-Paul-Jacques (with the meaning of "Someone"); [17] Random people (similar to Average John/Jane): Monsieur/Madame Tout-le-monde [citation needed] (Mr/Mrs Everyone), Untel/Unetelle (Mr/Mrs NoName; literally, “a such” and thus similar to the English “so-and-so”), [18] Madame Michu (only female), [19] (M./Mme) Tartempion (familiar and a little satirical); [20]
For example, the phrase, "John, my best friend" uses the scheme known as apposition. Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men").
In a language such as English, it is derogatory to use the inanimate pronoun it to refer to a person (except in some cases to a small child), and although it is traditional to use the masculine he to refer to a person of unspecified gender, the movement towards gender-neutral language requires that another method be found, such as saying he or she.
A particular problem for coreference resolution in English is the pronoun it, which has many uses. It can refer much like he and she, except that it generally refers to inanimate objects (the rules are actually more complex: animals may be any of it, he, or she; ships are traditionally she; hurricanes are usually it despite having gendered names).
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (Africa; Jupiter; Sarah; Walmart) as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (continent, planet, person, corporation) and may be used when referring to instances of a specific class (a continent, another planet, these persons, our corporation).