Indefinite Descriptions
Edited by Eliot Michaelson (King's College London, King's College London)
About this topic
Summary | Indefinite descriptions like "a G" have received somewhat less attention than their definite cousins. Traditionally, these were taken to contribute a restricted existential claim (restricted by the overt descriptive material) to the the semantic content expressed by the utterance. More recently, however, many have noted that indefinite descriptions allow for a "specific" reading—that is, a reading on which they are used to talk about specific objects. This raises a question of semantic import parallel to that of how to account for "referential uses" of definite descriptions. Other outstanding questions regarding indefinite descriptions include how to account for their behavior in intensional contexts and whether what distinguishes them from definites is ultimately a matter of semantics or pragmatics. |
Key works | Russell 1905 provided the outline of what has become the standard theory of indefinites in the course of his discussion of definite descriptions. This analysis treated indefinites as having bare existential import. Chastain 1975 argued that this analysis could not properly account for specific readings of indefinites and, in particular, the role they play in grounding anaphoric chains. This sort of argument is expanded in Donnellan 1979. More recently, Edelberg 1986 has raised a number of difficult puzzles regarding how to account for indefinites in intensional contexts and Szabó 2000 has proposed a unified semantic analysis of both definite and indefinite descriptions. |
Introductions | Ludlow 2008 |
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Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Lynne Tirrell Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |