Discourse and deixis
About: This article is published in Journal of Semantics.The article was published on 1982-01-01. It has received 2 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Deixis.
Citations
More filters
12 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, it was shown that definite descriptions are to be interpreted in a Russellian way, which would then imply that there was one and only one fortune teller whom Max consulted.
Abstract: If one takes a fortune teller to be the antecedent of she, the semantic import of the pronoun would seem intuitively to be given by the description the fortune teller that M a x consulted. An explanation for this intuition might be found, in part, in the natural inclination to regard she as a referring expression. Assuming that the pronoun refers, if one asks who it refers to, there can be but one answer, viz., Max's fortune teller. On the hypothesis that definite descriptions are to be interpreted in a Russellian way, (1) would then imply that there was one and only one fortune teller whom Max consulted. In effect, (1) would be, so to speak, Russell-equivalent to the sentence
2 citations