Keelefilosoofia raamat
like) the relation of sitting on. Sentences thus mirror the states of affairs they
describe, and that is how they get to mean those things. For the most part, of
course, words are arbitrarily associated with the things they refer to; some-
one simply decided that Hitler was to be called "Adolf," and the inscription
or sound "dog" could have been used to mean anything.
This Referential Theory of Linguistic Meaning would explain the sig-
nificance of all expressions in terms of their having been conventionally
associated with things or states of affairs in the world, and it would explain
a human being's understanding a sentence in terms of that person's knowing
what the sentence's component words refer to. It is a natural and appealing
view. Indeed it may seem obviously correct, at least so far as it goes. And one
would have a hard time denying that reference or naming is our cleanest-cut
annaabi.ee 
