Talk:Referent

Specific fields
(diff | hist). . Referent‎; 15:11. . (-185)‎ . . ‎Victor Yus (talk | contribs)‎ (OK granted, but as the dictionary says, one meaning is much more common. And its not the same as grammatical subject/object)
 * Okay. But what it really needs is refs for the specific fields where the first meaning is used.In ictu oculi (talk) 09:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. Do you know of any such fields? I can't say I've ever met this meaning (referent = that which refers, rather than that which is referred to), even though it's the meaning I would expect etymologically.Victor Yus (talk) 10:36, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It was because of seeing such an odd use that attention was drawn to the M-W in the first place, but no, I can't remember what it was. Normally the thing/person doing the referring to the referent would be the signifier. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:40, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * So how about we make this into a redirect to reference, and add a footnote to that article (next to the usual definition of "referent", which I added recently to the intro) to say that the word might rarely be used in the other meaning? Victor Yus (talk) 08:15, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I see you're a new User. A belated welcome to Wikipedia. A referent and a reference are not the same thing. What's more of an issue is that this as it stands is a dicdef and needs fleshing out with text about referent. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing much progress on this. At the moment the "article" is just a few scraps of information taken out of context, and incomprehensible as a result. I would still redirect this to reference, where there's a hope that the topic might be covered fully. It doesn't matter that referent is not the same thing as reference, since the topic of "referent" is covered by (in fact it's almost the same as) the topic of "reference". If we are not trying to write a dictionary, we don't need a separate article for every word. Victor Yus (talk) 07:58, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Victor, do you mind if I ask a couple of questions: Personally I don't yet see the need, but happy to listen to a case. Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:16, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
 * (1) do you have a WP:RS for the statement that "the topic of "referent" is covered by (in fact it's almost the same as) the topic of "reference"."? (I only ask because the article has 8 sources saying they aren't the same thing).
 * (2) Are you proposing (a) an AfD and redirect, or (b) a merge?
 * (3) Under what WP policy would you make proposal (2) above?
 * There may be some misunderstanding here: there are two slightly different meanings of "reference" - (a) the process of referring; (b) the thing that refers. The sources that say that referent and reference are not the same thing are clearly using "reference" in meaning (b) (and are clearly right). But I believe the WP article reference is not about reference in that special meaning, but is about reference in meaning (a) - the whole process. And that topic therefore naturally includes both referents (and synonyms thereof) and references (in meaning (b); and synonyms thereof). So unless - or until - someone can write a stand-alone article of any value about "referents", it would be better to redirect people searching for that term straight to the "reference" article. Victor Yus (talk) 10:29, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Dicdef tag
I'm moving this here for a second as I'm interested to hear discussion of why this is a dicdef and what can/should be done to improve the article. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:22, 12 March 2012 (UTC)