Reference and Computation

Kronfeld's book attacks the problem of referring: How do speakers reveal what entities they are talking about? How do they choose particular referring expressions in their utterances? These questions are asked from the perspective of a plan-based theory of speech acts and communication. Utterances are viewed as acts that are intended by speakers to have certain effects on the addressees, and on the world more generally. Utterances are therefore to be planned in broadly the same way as other types of acts are. Kronfeld's embedding of referring in speech act theory rests partly on a Gricean formulation of the literal goal of a referring expression. The relationship of this goal to the looser notion of the discourse purpose of the expression is discussed. Another aspect of the speech act theme is the discussion of two ways in which a referring expression can be intended by a speaker to be relevant: functionally relevant or conversationally relevant. Functionally relevant expressions are used primarily to lead the addressee to identify an object. Conversationally relevant descriptions are those that are intended to focus the addressee on a specific aspect of an object. Such descriptions are related to a specific type of Gricean conversational implicature. Kronfeld carefully draws a distinction between the problem of referring and the philosophical problem of reference. The latter problem is cast as the question, "How can thoughts (and sentences that articulate them) be about objects?" (p. 13). Kronfeld covers quite a lot of ground on the philosophical problem of reference, as the problem of referring is somewhat dependent on it. Kronfeld concentrates throughout on reference to physical objects, and on referring expressions that are noun phrases. Furthermore, almost all the book is about definite descriptions, names and other expressions that refer to single, specific, physical objects, rather than to indefinite objects, several objects, or sets of objects. Kronfeld also stresses that he is not directly concerned with the anaphoric linking of pronouns to other noun phrases. He is directly concerned only with links between noun phrases and the world. In fact, much of the book is a defense of the descriptive approach to the philosophical problem of reference in thought and in language. In this approach, to refer to an object is essentially to have or invoke a mental representation of that object. The relationship between a sentence or thought and the objects it is about is that of denotation, which in turn is a function of descriptive content. The descriptive approach