Reference and Inference

Reference is defined as the act of the speaker/writer using a linguistic form to enable a listener/reader to identify something, depends on the speaker's intentions (e.g. to refer to sth.) and on the speaker's beliefs (e.g. so the listener can identify the speaker's intention).

The concept of reference is tied to the speaker's goals (for example, to identify something) and the speaker's beliefs (for example, can the listener be expected to know that particular something?)

Reference is based on some locally successful choice of expression. Successful reference is necessarily collaborative: the speaker and the listener have the role of thinking about what the other has in mind.

Reference is not simply a relationship between the meaning of a word or phrase and an object or person in the world. It is a social act, in which the speaker assumes that the word or phrase chosen to identify an object or person will be interpreted as the speaker intended.

Since successful reference does not only depend on the speaker but also on the listener, we have to include the notion of inference, which denotes the process of decoding the pragmatic meaning of an utterance. In order to do so, the listener uses additional knowledge to make sense of what has not been explicitly said. 

Inference is the listener's use of additional knowledge to make sense of what is not explicit in an utterance.