Chapter 1. Reference
Linguistic expressions refer to concrete or abstract entities in the world in a symbolic way. Expressions of abstract entities are generally called ‘discourse referents.’ The same entity can be signed by a number of different linguistic expressions, named as referring expressions. These are definite or indefinite nouns [Pragmatics 1.2], pronouns [Lexicon 3.7], proper names and bare nouns [Lexicon 3.1].
Noun phrases [Syntax 4] can be used for deictic as well as anaphoric reference in discourse. In deictic usage they get their reference from the immediate physical context,on the other hand, in anaphoric usage they pick up their referents from the previous discourse context.