Reference can be done by words defined by type (common nouns), token or individual (proper nouns), or contextually (pronouns). Reference in these three ways is almost always to individuals. The animacy of common noun categories is often relevant for grammatical behavior. Personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns are defined by properties of the speech act context. Contextual expressions may stand alone for reference or function as modifiers of nouns, i.e. attributives or articles. Articles are defined by two subtle contextual properties, referent status and identifiability. Referent status involves accessibility in discourse or shared knowledge, and, for non-accessible referents, whether they are real or not. Identifiability pertains to whether the referent’s identity is known, or is only identifiable by type. Distribution of pronoun/article uses can be represented as semantic maps on a crosslinguistic conceptual space of functions. Tracking of a referent in discourse is grammatically encoded as often as referent accessibility or identifiability. Finally, reference to a type (generic) reference is possible; strategies are typically recruited from reference to a token.

This chapter looks at nine nouns in Heaney poems, and considers how each shoulders the weight of narrative or meaning in its poem. The chosen nouns are scoop, bucket, lorries (two), car, bicycle, rope and two individual doors. The chapter examines Heaney’s own exhortation in ‘Oysters’, ‘Verb, pure verb’, putting the physical objects and their too-solid nouns at the centre of a close reading of eight poems, including ‘Sunlight’, ‘A Constable Calls’, ‘Súgán’ and ‘Postscript’. The chapter argues that nouns provide a kind of touchstone reality in the poems and are emblems and artefacts of the idea of belonging, deployed to service the relationship between the physical (often domestic) world and the human experience of it.