As in the “Mr. Kawasaki” example, a successful act of reference depends more on the listener’s ability to recognize what we mean than on the listener’s “dictionary” knowledge of a word we use. For example, in a restaurant, one waiter can ask another, Where’s the spinach salad sitting? and receive the reply, He’s sitting by the door. If you’re studying linguistics, you might ask someone, Can I look at your Chomsky? and get the response, Sure, it’s on the shelf over there. These examples make it clear that we can use names associated with things (salad) to refer to people, and use names of people (Chomsky) to refer to things. The key process here is called inference. An inference is additional information used by the listener to create a connection between what is said and what must be meant. In the last example, the listener has to operate with the inference: “if X is the name of the writer of a book, then X can be used to identify a copy of a book by that writer.” Similar types of inferences are necessary to understand someone who says that Picasso is in the museum or We saw Shakespeare in London or Jennifer is wearing Calvin Klein.