Language and Cognition: Referentiality as a Mental Construct

Abstract

This paper is developed within the scope of the debate between internalist and externalist views of reference, and argues in favor of the internalist view, translated in terms of the relation Refer. By carrying out a contrastive analysis of data from Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, it aims to demonstrate the existence of formal features which, under given circumstances, denote entities. It is proposed that the faculty of language deals with the concept of entity only as the result of formal features, and that formal features are responsible for the interpretation of an entity with respect to a given world.