منابع مشابه
Incomplete Definite Descriptions, Demonstrative Completion and Redundancy
“Incomplete” definite descriptions (i.e. descriptions that violate the uniqueness constraint) have been offered various accounts in semantics. Among them, the so-called ellipsis account, which analyzes “the F” as elliptical for “the F which is that F”. I begin by arguing that the objections raised against this account have not been conclusive, and go on to supply a new argument against it, whic...
متن کاملWhy Incomplete Definite Descriptions do not Defeat Russell’s Theory of Descriptions
For Russell, a simple sentence containing a description, the F, is true only if a single object satisfies F. Sentences containing incomplete descriptions pose problems because they are often used to express truths, even though more than one thing in the discourse satisfies F. It is argued (i) that non-Russellian analyses cannot solve these problems, and (ii) that Russellian analyses can, prov...
متن کاملGenerating Minimal Definite Descriptions
The incremental algorithm introduced in (Dale and Reiter, 1995) for producing distinguishing descriptions does not always generate a minimal description. In this paper, I show that when generalised to sets of individuals and disjunctive properties, this approach might generate unnecessarily long and ambiguous and/or epistemically redundant descriptions. I then present an alternative, constraint...
متن کامل. Definite Descriptions (original Proposal)
What happens when the description is improper? A description νΦ is proper if there is exactly-one entity such that Φ [in the relevant situation]; otherwise, it is improper. We propose to treat improper descriptions as non-starters, which vitiate every expression in which they appear. In particular, an improper description is null [i.e., denotes nothing], and every expression in which it appears...
متن کامل(De)accenting Definite Descriptions
In this paper it is shown that a definite description refers to a given discourse referent if the descriptive content is deaccented. But if there is an accent on the descriptive content, a novel referent is introduced. Starting from a uniqueness view of definiteness, a distinction between two uses of definite descriptions is proposed: ‘Given definites’ represent identity anaphors exploiting the...
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic
سال: 1986
ISSN: 0029-4527
DOI: 10.1305/ndjfl/1093636680