Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 27, 2026

Referential indeterminacy

In linguistics, referential indeterminacy is a situation in which different people vary in naming objects. For example, William Labov studied this effect using illustrations of different drinking vessels to see what people would label as "cups" and what people would label as "mugs".

Last revised
May 27, 2026
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In linguistics, referential indeterminacy12 is a situation in which different people vary in naming objects. For example, William Labov studied this effect using illustrations of different drinking vessels to see what people would label as "cups" and what people would label as "mugs".

See also

See also

  • Idiolect – Individual's unique use of language
  • Ontology – Philosophical study of being
  • Polysemy – Capacity for a sign to have multiple related meanings
  • Regiolect – Variant of a languagePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
  • Semantic relations
  • Synonymy – Words or phrases of the same meaning
References

References

  1. "Indeterminacy and Inscrutability of Reference - Bibliography - PhilPapers". philpapers.org. Retrieved 17 July 2025.
  2. "What is the difference between semantic and referential indeterminacy?". philosophy.stackexchange.com. Retrieved 17 July 2025.