Indefinites between Predication and Reference

The Reference of Indefinites

Der unbestimmte Artikel hat die Aufgabe, aus verschiedenen Vertretern einer Gattung einen einzelnen herauszuheben. 1

Folk Ideas About Reference and Specific Indefinites

Informal discourse about specific indefinites often employs ideas such as ‘the individual the speaker had in mind’. Although this kind of discourse most often seems to proceed coherently, many semanticists are sceptical about theoretical or formal accounts employing these notions. In this paper, we argue that folk ideas about reference are central to semantics, figuring in the truth conditions ...

About Reference and Specific Indefinites ( Extended Handout ) Richard

We further argue that while discourse containing specific indefinites may make reference to speaker’s referents, the indefinite forms themselves are never directly referential, rather they are attributive. Moreover, the speaker’s referent never figures directly in any of the communicated propositions (unlike with definites). Thus these specific indefinites are ‘attributive’ in any sense of that...

Predication 1 Predication

Predication