Novel biomarkers for visceral and liver fat: establishing a framework for testing the role of ectopic fat in cognitive impairment

When using demonstrative descriptions like "that boy" or pronouns like "he", speakers can point to the intended referent, resulting in what is called the "exophoric reference", or simply refer to familiar entities in an "anaphoric reference". The presence and absence of co-speech pointing has semantic consequences, such as blocking a covarying reading: when the pronoun "his" is accompanied with pointing in the sentence "Everyone talked to his dog", the reading where for every x x talked to x's dog disappears. While such exophoric use has been assumed to be part of a more general meaning of a demonstrative, we show that the anaphoric vs. exophoric distinction is orthogonal to the pronoun vs. demonstrative distinction and present experiments that further explore the role of pointing in reference.