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Situations and Individuals

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  1. Lexical-rule predicativism about names.Aidan Gray - 2018 - Synthese 195 (12):5549-5569.
    Predicativists hold that proper names have predicate-type semantic values. They face an obvious challenge: in many languages names normally occur as, what appear to be, grammatical arguments. The standard version of predicativism answers this challenge by positing an unpronounced determiner in bare occurrences. I argue that this is a mistake. Predicativists should draw a distinction between two kinds of semantic type—underived semantic type and derived semantic type. The predicativist thesis concerns the underived semantic type of proper names and underdetermines a (...)
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  • The Mill-Frege Theory of Proper Names.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2018 - Mind 127 (508):1107-1168.
    This paper argues for a version of metalinguistic descriptivism, the Mill-Frege view, comparing it to a currently popular alternative, predicativism. The Mill-Frege view combines tenets of Fregean views with features of the theory of direct reference. According to it, proper names have metalinguistic senses, known by competent speakers on the basis of their competence, which figure in ancillary presuppositions. In support of the view the paper argues that the name-bearing relation—which predicativists cite to account for the properties that they take (...)
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  • The Science of Meaning: Essays on the Metatheory of Natural Language Semantics.Derek Ball & Brian Rabern (eds.) - 2018 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    By creating certain marks on paper, or by making certain sounds-breathing past a moving tongue-or by articulation of hands and bodies, language users can give expression to their mental lives. With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning. This fact can be quite mystifying, yet a science of linguistic meaning-semantics-has emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Semantics is the study of meaning. But what exactly is "meaning"? (...)
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  • Definite descriptions and negative existential quantifiers.Paul Elbourne - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (7):1597-1612.
    Previous theorists have claimed that Russell’s theory of definite descriptions gives the wrong truth conditions to sentences in which definite descriptions are embedded under certain other operators; but the other operators used, such as conditionals and propositional attitude verbs, have introduced intensional and hyperintensional complications that might be thought to obscure the point against Russell. This paper shows that the same kind of problem arises when the operator in question allows the context to be extensional. It is further argued that (...)
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  • Descriptions and non-doxastic attitude ascriptions.Wojciech Rostworowski - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (6):1311-1331.
    This paper addresses a certain objection to the quantificational theory of definite descriptions. According to this objection, the quantificational account cannot provide correct interpretations of definite descriptions embedded in the non-doxastic attitude ascriptions and therefore ought to be rejected. In brief, the objection says that the quantificational theory is committed to the view that a sentence of the form “The F is G” is equivalent to the claim that there is a unique F and it is G, while the ascription (...)
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  • Names in strange places.Aidan Gray - 2017 - Linguistics and Philosophy 40 (5):429-472.
    This paper is about how to interpret and evaluate purported evidence for predicativism about proper names. I aim to point out some underappreciated thorny issues and to offer both predicativists and non-predicativists some advice about how best to pursue their respective projects. I hope to establish three related claims: that non-predicativists have to posit relatively exotic, though not entirely implausible, polysemic mechanisms to capture the range of data that predicativists have introduced ; that neither referentialism nor extant versions of predicativism (...)
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  • ‘The’ Problem for the-Predicativism.Robin Jeshion - 2017 - Philosophical Review 126 (2):219-240.
    Clarence Sloat, Ora Matushansky, and Delia Graff Fara advocate a Syntactic Rationale on behalf of predicativism, the view that names are predicates in all of their occurrences. Each argues that a set of surprising syntactic data compels us to recognize names as a special variety of count noun. This data set, they say, reveals that names’ interaction with the determiner system differs from that of common count nouns only with respect to the definite article ‘the’. They conclude that this special (...)
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  • To Be F Is To Be G.Cian Dorr - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 30 (1):39-134.
    This paper is an investigation of the general logic of "identifications", claims such as 'To be a vixen is to be a female fox', 'To be human is to be a rational animal', and 'To be just is to help one's friends and harm one's enemies', many of which are of great importance to philosophers. I advocate understanding such claims as expressing higher-order identity, and discuss a variety of different general laws which they might be thought to obey. [New version: (...)
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  • Pronouns.Daniel Büring - 2011 - In Paul Portner, Claudia Maienborn & Klaus von Heusinger (eds.), Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Mouton De Gruyter. pp. 971-996.
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  • The argument from convention revisited.Francesco Pupa - 2018 - Synthese 195 (5):2175-2204.
    The argument from convention contends that the regular use of definite descriptions as referential devices strongly implies that a referential semantic convention underlies such usage. On the presumption that definite descriptions also participate in a quantificational semantic convention, the argument from convention has served as an argument for the thesis that the English definite article is ambiguous. Here, I revisit this relatively new argument. First, I address two recurring criticisms of the argument from convention: its alleged tendency to overgenerate and (...)
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  • Operator arguments revisited.Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, John Hawthorne & Peter Fritz - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (11):2933-2959.
    Certain passages in Kaplan’s ‘Demonstratives’ are often taken to show that non-vacuous sentential operators associated with a certain parameter of sentential truth require a corresponding relativism concerning assertoric contents: namely, their truth values also must vary with that parameter. Thus, for example, the non-vacuity of a temporal sentential operator ‘always’ would require some of its operands to have contents that have different truth values at different times. While making no claims about Kaplan’s intentions, we provide several reconstructions of how such (...)
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  • Can minimalism about truth embrace polysemy?Katarzyna Kijania-Placek - 2018 - Synthese 195 (3):955-985.
    Paul Horwich is aware of the fact that his theory as stated in his works is directly applicable only to a language in which a word, understood as a syntactic type, is connected with exactly one literal meaning. Yet he claims that the theory is expandable to include homonymy and indexicality and thus may be considered as applicable to natural language. My concern in this paper is with yet another kind of ambiguity—systematic polysemy—that assigns multiple meanings to one linguistic type. (...)
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  • On the supposed connection between proper names and singular thought.Rachel Goodman - 2018 - Synthese 195 (1):197-223.
    A thesis I call the name-based singular thought thesis is part of orthodoxy in contemporary philosophy of mind and language: it holds that taking part in communication involving a proper name puts one in a position to entertain singular thoughts about the name’s referent. I argue, first, that proponents of the NBT thesis have failed to explain the phenomenon of name-based singular thoughts, leaving it mysterious how name-use enables singular thoughts. Second, by outlining the reasoning that makes the NBT thesis (...)
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  • A unified non monstrous semantics for third person pronouns.Fabio Del Prete & Sandro Zucchi - 2017 - Semantics and Pragmatics 10.
    It is common practice in formal semantics to assume that the context specifies an assignment of values to variables and that the same variables that receive contextually salient values when they occur free may also be bound by quantifiers and λs. These assumptions are at work to provide a unified account of free and bound uses of third person pronouns, namely one by which the same lexical item is involved in both uses. One way to pursue this account is to (...)
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  • Metaphors and Martinis: a response to Jessica Keiser.Andreas Stokke - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (4):853-859.
    This note responds to criticism put forth by Jessica Keiser against a theory of lying as Stalnakerian assertion. According to this account, to lie is to say something one believes to be false and thereby propose that it become common ground. Keiser objects that this view wrongly counts particular kinds of non-literal speech as instances of lying. In particular, Keiser argues that the view invariably counts metaphors and certain uses of definite descriptions as lies. It is argued here that both (...)
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  • A Problem for Predicativism Not Solved by Predicativism.Anders J. Schoubye - forthcoming - Semantics and Pragmatics.
    In 'The Reference Book' (2012), Hawthorne and Manley observe the following contrast between (1) and (2): -/- (1) In every race John won. (2) In every race, the colt won. -/- The name 'John' in (1) must intuitively refer to the same single individual for each race. However, the description 'the colt' in (2) has a co-varying reading, i.e. a reading where for each race it refers to a different colt. This observation is a prima facie problem for proponents of (...)
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  • Semantics and truth relative to a world.Michael Glanzberg - 2009 - Synthese 166 (2):281-307.
    This paper argues that relativity of truth to a world plays no significant role in empirical semantic theory, even as it is done in the model-theoretic tradition relying on intensional type theory. Some philosophical views of content provide an important notion of truth at a world, but they do not constrain the empirical domain of semantic theory in a way that makes this notion empirically significant. As an application of this conclusion, this paper shows that a potential motivation for relativism (...)
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  • Incomplete descriptions and indistinguishable participants.Paul Elbourne - 2016 - Natural Language Semantics 24 (1):1-43.
    The implicit content associated with incomplete definite descriptions is contributed in the form of definite descriptions of situations. A definite description of this kind is contributed by a small structure in the syntax, which is interpreted, in general terms, as ‘the situation that bears R to s’.
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  • Against the Russellian open future.Anders J. Schoubye & Brian Rabern - 2017 - Mind 126 (504): 1217–1237.
    Todd (2016) proposes an analysis of future-directed sentences, in particular sentences of the form 'will(φ)', that is based on the classic Russellian analysis of definite descriptions. Todd's analysis is supposed to vindicate the claim that the future is metaphysically open while retaining a simple Ockhamist semantics of future contingents and the principles of classical logic, i.e. bivalence and the law of excluded middle. Consequently, an open futurist can straightforwardly retain classical logic without appeal to supervaluations, determinacy operators, or any further (...)
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  • Descriptive Indexicals and Epistemic Modality.Katarzyna Kijania-Placek - 2017 - Topoi 36 (1):161-170.
    In this paper I argue for a non-referential interpretation of some uses of indexicals embedded under epistemic modals. The so-called descriptive uses of indexicals come in several types and it is argued that those embedded within the scope of modal operators do not require non-referential interpretation, provided the modality is interpreted as epistemic. I endeavor to show that even if we allow an epistemic interpretation of modalities, the resulting interpretation will still be inadequate as long as we retain a referential (...)
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  • Definiteness and determinacy.Elizabeth Coppock & David Beaver - 2015 - Linguistics and Philosophy 38 (5):377-435.
    This paper distinguishes between definiteness and determinacy. Definiteness is seen as a morphological category which, in English, marks a uniqueness presupposition, while determinacy consists in denoting an individual. Definite descriptions are argued to be fundamentally predicative, presupposing uniqueness but not existence, and to acquire existential import through general type-shifting operations that apply not only to definites, but also indefinites and possessives. Through these shifts, argumental definite descriptions may become either determinate or indeterminate. The latter option is observed in examples like (...)
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  • Type-Ambiguous Names.Anders J. Schoubye - 2017 - Mind 126 (503):715-767.
    The orthodox view of proper names, Millianism, provides a very simple and elegant explanation of the semantic contribution of referential uses of names–names that occur as bare singulars and as the argument of a predicate. However, one problem for Millianism is that it cannot explain the semantic contribution of predicative uses of names. In recent years, an alternative view, so-called the-predicativism, has become increasingly popular. According to the-predicativists, names are uniformly count nouns. This straightforwardly explains why names can be used (...)
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  • A problem for predicativism solved by predicativism.Delia Graff Fara - 2015 - Analysis 75 (3):362-370.
    Consider the following sentences: In every race, the colt won; In every race, John won.John Hawthorne and David Manley say that the difference between these two sentences raises a problem for Predicativism about names. According to the currently more standard version of Predicativism, a bare singular name in argument position, like ‘John’ in , is embedded in a definite description with an unpronounced definite article. The problem is supposed to be that permits a covarying reading that allows for different races (...)
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  • Referentialism and Predicativism About Proper Names.Robin Jeshion - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (S2):363-404.
    Overview The debate over the semantics of proper names has, of late, heated up, focusing on the relative merits of referentialism and predicativism. Referentialists maintain that the semantic function of proper names is to designate individuals. They hold that a proper name, as it occurs in a sentence in a context of use, refers to a specific individual that is its referent and has just that individual as its semantic content, its contribution to the proposition expressed by the sentence. Furthermore, (...)
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  • The Other Francis Bacon: On Non-BARE Proper Names.Ora Matushansky - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (2):335-362.
    In this paper I provide novel arguments for the predicative approach to proper names, which claims that argument proper names are definite descriptions containing a naming predicate . I first argue that modified proper names, such as the incomparable Maria Callas or the other Francis Bacon cannot be handled on the hypothesis that argument proper names have no internal structure and uniformly denote entities. I then discuss cases like every Adolf, which would normally be interpreted as every individual named Adolf (...)
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  • Necessarily Maybe. Quantifiers, Modality and Vagueness.Alessandro Torza - 2015 - In Quantifiers, Quantifiers, and Quantifiers. Themes in Logic, Metaphysics, and Language. (Synthese Library vol. 373). Springer. pp. 367-387.
    Languages involving modalities and languages involving vagueness have each been thoroughly studied. On the other hand, virtually nothing has been said about the interaction of modality and vagueness. This paper aims to start filling that gap. Section 1 is a discussion of various possible sources of vague modality. Section 2 puts forward a model theory for a quantified language with operators for modality and vagueness. The model theory is followed by a discussion of the resulting logic. In Section 3, the (...)
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  • Demonstratives without rigidity or ambiguity.Ethan Nowak - 2014 - Linguistics and Philosophy 37 (5):409-436.
    Most philosophers recognize that applying the standard semantics for complex demonstratives to non-deictic instances results in truth conditions that are anomalous, at best. This fact has generated little concern, however, since most philosophers treat non-deictic demonstratives as marginal cases, and believe that they should be analyzed using a distinct semantic mechanism. In this paper, I argue that non-deictic demonstratives cannot be written off; they are widespread in English and foreign languages, and must be treated using the same semantic machinery that (...)
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  • The structure of propositions and cross-linguistic syntactic variability.Vasilis Tsompanidis - 2013 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy (39):399-419.
    In Jeffrey King’s theory of structured propositions, propositional structure mirrors the syntactic structure of natural language sentences that express it. I provide cases where this claim individuates propositions too finely across languages. Crucially, King’s paradigmatic proposition-fact ^that Dara swims^ cannot be believed by a monolingual Greek speaker, due to Greek syntax requiring an obligatory article in front of proper names. King’s two possible replies are: (i) to try to streamline the syntax of Greek and English; or (ii) to insist that (...)
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  • Names Are Predicates.Delia Graff Fara - 2015 - Philosophical Review 124 (1):59-117.
    One reason to think that names have a predicate-type semantic value is that they naturally occur in count-noun positions: ‘The Michaels in my building both lost their keys’; ‘I know one incredibly sharp Cecil and one that's incredibly dull’. Predicativism is the view that names uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are predicates (...)
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  • Incomplete Descriptions, Incomplete Quantified Expressions (Part of the dissertation portfolio Modality, Names and Descriptions).Zsófia Zvolenszky - 2007 - Dissertation, New York University
    This paper offers a unified, quantificational treatment of incomplete descriptions like ‘the table’. An incomplete quantified expression like ‘every bottle’ (as in “Every bottle is empty”) can feature in true utterances despite the fact that the world contains nonempty bottles. Positing a contextual restriction on the bottles being talked about is a straightforward solution. It is argued that the same strategy can be extended to incomplete definite descriptions across the board. ncorporating the contextual restrictions into semantics involves meeting a complex (...)
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  • On the characterization of alternatives.Danny Fox & Roni Katzir - 2011 - Natural Language Semantics 19 (1):87-107.
    We present an argument for revising the theory of alternatives for Scalar Implicatures and for Association with Focus. We argue that in both cases the alternatives are determined in the same way, as a contextual restriction of the focus value of the sentence, which, in turn, is defined in structure-sensitive terms. We provide evidence that contextual restriction is subject to a constraint that prevents it from discriminating between alternatives when they stand in a particular logical relationship with the assertion or (...)
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  • Formal linking in Internally Headed Relatives.Min-Joo Kim - 2007 - Natural Language Semantics 15 (4):279-315.
    This paper aims to clarify and resolve issues surrounding the so-called formal linking problem in interpreting the Internally Headed Relative Clause construction in Korean and Japanese, a problem that has been identified in recent E-type pronominal treatments of the construction (e.g., Hoshi, K. (1995). Structural and interpretive aspects of head-internal and head-external relative clauses. PhD dissertation, University of Rochester; Shimoyama, J. (2001). Wh-constructions in Japanese. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst). In the literature, this problem refers to the difficulty (...)
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  • When the donkey lost its fleas: persistence, minimal situations, and embedded quantifiers. [REVIEW]Eytan Zweig - 2006 - Natural Language Semantics 14 (4):283-296.
    This paper revisits the question of whether propositions in situation semantics must be persistent [Kratzer (1989). Linguistics and Philosophy, 12, 607–653]. It shows that ignoring persistence causes empirical problems for theories which use quantification over minimal situations as a solution for donkey anaphora [Elbourne (2005). Situations and individuals. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press]. At the same time, modifying these theories to incorporate persistence makes them incompatible with the use of situations for contextual restriction [Kratzer (2004). Ms., University of Massachusetts].
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  • Intentional identity and descriptions.William Lanier - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (2):289-302.
    What is the semantic contribution of anaphoric links in sentences like, ‘A physicist was late to the party. He brought some bongos’? A natural first thought is that the passage entails a wide-scope existential claim that there is something that both (i) was late to the party and (ii) brought some bongos. Intentional identity sentences are counter-examples to this natural thought applied to anaphora in general. Some have tried to rescue the thought and accommodate the counter-examples by positing mythical objects. (...)
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  • Structured contexts and anaphoric dependencies.Julie Hunter - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (1):35-58.
    Sensitivity to the extra-linguistic context, as exhibited by indexical and demonstrative expressions, and sensitivity to the linguistic context, as exhibited by, for example, anaphoric uses of third person pronouns, are regularly regarded as different and independent phenomena. The data on indexicals, demonstratives, and third person pronouns, however, call for a more unified notion of context and of context sensitivity. This paper aims to develop such a unified picture by generalizing the notion of anaphora to encompass extra-linguistic context dependency and generalizing (...)
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  • On the unification argument for the predicate view on proper names.Dolf Rami - 2014 - Synthese 191 (5):1-22.
    The predicate view on proper names opts for a uniform semantic representation of proper nouns like ‘Alfred’ as predicates on the level of logical form. Early defences of this view can be found in Sloat (Language, vol. 45, pp. 26–30, 1969) and Burge (J. Philos. 70: 425–439, 1973), but there is an increasing more recent interest in this view on proper names. My paper aims to provide a reconstruction and critique of Burge’s main argument for the predicate view on proper (...)
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  • Incremental vs. symmetric accounts of presupposition projection: an experimental approach.Emmanuel Chemla & Philippe Schlenker - 2012 - Natural Language Semantics 20 (2):177-226.
    The presupposition triggered by an expression E is generally satisfied by information that comes before rather than after E in the sentence or discourse. In Heim’s classic theory (1983), this left-right asymmetry is encoded in the lexical semantics of dynamic connectives and operators. But several recent analyses offer a more nuanced approach, in which presupposition satisfaction has two separate components: a general principle (which varies from theory to theory) specifies under what conditions a presupposition triggered by an expression E is (...)
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  • Metalinguistic negation and metaphysical affirmation.Mahrad Almotahari - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (3):497-517.
    In a series of articles, Kit Fine presents some highly compelling objections to monism, the doctrine that spatially coincident objects are identical. His objections rely on Leibniz’s Law and linguistic environments that appear to be immune to the standard charge of non-transparency and substitution failure. In this paper, I respond to Fine’s objections on behalf of the monist. Following Benjamin Schnieder, I observe that arguments from Leibniz’s Law are valid only if they involve descriptive, rather than metalinguistic, negation. Then I (...)
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  • Descriptions as variables.Paolo Santorio - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (1):41-59.
    On a popular view dating back to Russell, descriptions, both definite and indefinite alike, work syntactically and semantically like quantifiers. I have an argument against Russell's view. The argument supports a different picture: descriptions can behave syntactically and semantically like variables. This basic idea can be implemented in very different systematic analyses, but, whichever way one goes, there will be a significant departure from Russell. The claim that descriptions are variables is not new: what I offer is a new way (...)
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  • Counterfactual Attitudes and Multi-Centered Worlds.Dilip Ninan - 2012 - Semantics and Pragmatics 5 (5):1-57.
    Counterfactual attitudes like imagining, dreaming, and wishing create a problem for the standard formal semantic theory of de re attitude ascriptions. I show how the problem can be avoided if we represent an agent's attitudinal possibilities using "multi-centered worlds", possible worlds with multiple distinguished individuals, each of which represents an individual with whom the agent is acquainted. I then present a compositional semantics for de re ascriptions according to which singular terms are "assignment-sensitive" expressions and attitude verbs are "assignment shifters".
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  • Situation Pronouns in Determiner Phrases.Florian Schwarz - 2012 - Natural Language Semantics 20 (4):431-475.
    It is commonly argued that natural language has the expressive power of quantifying over intensional entities, such as times, worlds, or situations. A standard way of modelling this assumes that there are unpronounced but syntactically represented variables of the corresponding type. Not all that much as has been said, however, about the exact syntactic location of these variables. Meanwhile, recent work has highlighted a number of problems that arise because the interpretive options for situation pronouns seem to be subject to (...)
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  • On Bishops and Donkeys.Nicky Kroll - 2008 - Natural Language Semantics 16 (4):359-372.
    The problem of indistinguishable participants is a well-known problem for D-type theories of donkey pronouns. Recently, Paul Elbourne has offered a D-type theory that purports to dissolve the problem of indistinguishable participants. I argue against Elboune’s solution.
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  • Donkey anaphora: the view from sign language (ASL and LSF).Philippe Schlenker - 2011 - Linguistics and Philosophy 34 (4):341-395.
    There are two main approaches to the problem of donkey anaphora (e.g. If John owns a donkey , he beats it ). Proponents of dynamic approaches take the pronoun to be a logical variable, but they revise the semantics of quantifiers so as to allow them to bind variables that are not within their syntactic scope. Older dynamic approaches took this measure to apply solely to existential quantifiers; recent dynamic approaches have extended it to all quantifiers. By contrast, proponents of (...)
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  • Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 15, Saarbruecken.Ingo Reich (ed.) - 2010 - Saarbrücken: Universitätsverlag des Saarlandes.
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  • Ghosts, Murderers, and the Semantics of Descriptions.Anders Johan Schoubye - 2011 - Noûs 47 (3):496-533.
    It is widely agreed that sentences containing a non-denoting description embedded in the scope of a propositional attitude verb have true de dicto interpretations, and Russell's (1905) analysis of definite descriptions is often praised for its simple analysis of such cases, cf. e.g. Neale (1990). However, several people, incl. Elbourne (2005, 2009), Heim (1991), and Kripke (2005), have contested this by arguing that Russell's analysis yields incorrect predictions in non-doxastic attitude contexts. Heim and Elbourne have subsequently argued that once certain (...)
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  • Why the Predicativist Calling Account Fails: Names Can Never Hurt You.Heidi Savage - manuscript
    Recently, and rather startlingly, given the history of the debate about a name's semantic content, some claim that names are in fact predicates -- predicativism. Some of predicativists claim that a name's semantic content involves the concept of being called -- calling accounts that have been traditionally meta-linguistic. However, these accounts fail to be informative. Inspired by Burge's claim that proper names are literally true of the individuals that have them, Fara develops a non-meta-linguistic concept of being called analysed in (...)
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  • Descriptions, ambiguity, and representationalist theories of interpretation.Philipp Koralus - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 162 (2):275-290.
    Abstract Theories of descriptions tend to involve commitments about the ambiguity of descriptions. For example, sentences containing descriptions are widely taken to be ambiguous between de re , de dicto , and intermediate interpretations and are sometimes thought to be ambiguous between the former and directly referential interpretations. I provide arguments to suggest that none of these interpretations are due to ambiguities (or indexicality). On the other hand, I argue that descriptions are ambiguous between the above family of interpretations and (...)
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  • Understanding proper names.Michael McKinsey - 2010 - Linguistics and Philosophy 33 (4):325-354.
    There is a fairly general consensus that names are Millian (or Russellian) genuine terms, that is, are singular terms whose sole semantic function is to introduce a referent into the propositions expressed by sentences containing the term. This answers the question as to what sort of proposition is expressed by use of sentences containing names. But there is a second serious semantic problem about proper names, that of how the referents of proper names are determined. This is the question that (...)
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  • The existence entailments of definite descriptions.Paul Elbourne - 2010 - Linguistics and Philosophy 33 (1):1-10.
    Contrary to a claim made by Kaplan (Mind 114:933–1003, 2005) and Neale (Mind 114:809–871, 2005), the readings available to sentences containing definite descriptions embedded under propositional attitude verbs and conditionals do pose a significant problem for the Russellian theory of definite descriptions. The Fregean theory of descriptions, on the other hand, deals easily with the relevant data.
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  • Descriptions, truth value intuitions, and questions.Anders J. Schoubye - 2009 - Linguistics and Philosophy 32 (6):583-617.
    Since the famous debate between Russell (Mind 14: 479–493, 1905, Mind 66: 385–389, 1957) and Strawson (Mind 59: 320–344, 1950; Introduction to logical theory, 1952; Theoria, 30: 96–118, 1964) linguistic intuitions about truth values have been considered notoriously unreliable as a guide to the semantics of definite descriptions. As a result, most existing semantic analyses of definites leave a large number of intuitions unexplained. In this paper, I explore the nature of the relationship between truth value intuitions and non-referring definites. (...)
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