Abstract
The analysis of definite descriptions is not only an important issue in philosophy, philosophy of language, logic and foundations of mathematics but it is also of central interest to linguistic theory. Definite descriptions are a major issue for semantic research because they play a prominent role among the referring terms in a language. Referring terms, like proper names, definite noun phrases and indexical or demonstrative expressions, are the essential tools of a language to connect the meaning of linguistic expressions with objects in the real world, or a discourse world. Proper names refer to their referents by conventional rules, demonstratives fix their referents due to an ostension and indexical expressions determine their referents according to situational or pragmatic information. Definite descriptions show a more complex behavior, since they refer to their objects through descriptive or lexical information, on one hand, and contextual or pragmatic information, on the other hand. They form a continuum from exclusively lexically determined expressions to situationally dependent expressions. Therefore, an analysis of definite descriptions has to cope with this two-sided character, which can be found in other linguistic expressions, as well. In connection with this problem, it is very controversial whether definiteness is a semantic principle or a pragmatic strategy. But even if it is a pragmatic strategy definiteness is essential for the interpretation of linguistic expressions. For the representation of definite descriptions, one has to decide to encode definiteness in the semantic structure of the expression or leave it outside. In this case, definiteness has to be included in the pragmatic rules of application. And finally, the analysis of anaphora is intertwined with the representation of definiteness and definite descriptions. These are only few aspects of definite descriptions that have caused the special interest in linguistics investigating their nature.
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Von Heusinger, K. (1997). Definite Descriptions and Choice Functions. In: Akama, S. (eds) Logic, Language and Computation. Applied Logic Series, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5638-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5638-7_4
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