Proper Names and the Referential-Attributive Distinction

In this essay I argue that given Donnellan’s formulation of the attributive uses of definite descriptions, as well as Kripke’s [6] and Salmon’s [10] generalized accounts, most uses of definite descriptions that are taken to be attributive turn out not to be so. In building up to my main thesis, I first consider certain problematic cases of uses of definite descriptions that do not neatly fit into any category. I then argue that, in general, a complete definite description we use is complex, in which there is an embedded singular term that is used referentially. From this I conclude that an attributive use of a definite description is an extremely rare linguistic phenomenon, much less frequent than what Donnellan, Kripke, and Salmon have presupposed; so much so that the standard examples given by Donnellan of the attributive use of definite descriptions do not qualify as attributive

Deixis, associated with the gestural dimension of language, connects all language use to context of situation. It governs a number of grammatical and epistemological categories, including topicalization, orientational mapping and definite and unique reference. The focus of this paper is on the category mentioned last in the previous sentence: definite and unique reference across world Englishes.The aim is to explore the uses of definite descriptions (Russell, 1919), i.e., noun phrases with the definite article the, to determine the nature and extent of differences across the varieties. Research on this topic is driven by two observations. The first is recent research findings in corpus linguistics. For example, Poesio and Vieira (1998) suggest that native speakers differ considerably from each other in their judgment of whether a definite noun phrase refers to an antecedent in the text, and if so, which noun phrase is the antecedent. The second is that it seems reasonable to assume that differences in the use of definite descriptions across varieties exist in view of the fact that English is in contact with other languages in different parts of the world. These languages utilize different categories to represent the same reality or imagined reality that are expressed in English by deictic categories. Research has shown that ‘conceptual situation’ and ‘conceptual event’ are largely language‐specifc (see, e.g., Pawley, 1987), and bilinguals and multilinguals transfer their ways of speaking and writing to their use of English. Use of definite descriptions, therefore, is very likely to differ in Englishes used in different parts of the world.In this paper I utilize insights from earlier theories of definite descriptions (e.g., Christophersen, 1939; Hawkins, 1978; Webber, 1979; Prince, 1981, 1992; Heim, 1982) to analyze data from several world varieties of English. I also discuss the implications of my findings to the teaching of grammar in the EIL context.

This paper discusses a range of attested examples of NPs in which proper names are preceded by articles, determiners, and adjectives, arguing that such instances do not constitute a change into a common noun category. On the basis of such examples, it is claimed that the meaning of proper names relies not on unique reference, but on frame metonymy. Frames evoked by proper names interact with NP constructions, yielding a range of uses driven by the discourse context. Further, it is shown how the use of modified proper names in copular constructions is best explained through the framework of blending and the concept of constructional compositionality (as defined in Dancygier and Sweetser 2005).

The Millian view that the meaning of a proper name is simply its referent has long been popular among philosophers of language. It might even be deemed the orthodox view, despite its well‐known difficulties. Fregean and Russellian alternatives, though widely discussed, are much less popular. The Predicate View has not even been taken seriously, at least until fairly recently, but finally, it is receiving the attention it deserves. It says that a name expresses the property of bearing that name. Despite its apparent shortcomings, it has a distinct virtue: It straightforwardly reckons with the fact that proper names generally have multiple bearers and are sometimes used to ascribe the property of bearing a name rather than to refer to a particular bearer of the name. It holds that proper names are much the same as common nouns, both semantically and syntactically, with only superficial differences. They both can be quantified and modified. The main difference, at least in English (and some other languages), is that when used to refer a proper name, unlike a common noun, is not preceded by the definite article. The Predicate View accounts for manifestly predicative uses, but to be vindicated, it needs to do justice to the fact that the main use of proper names is to refer.

Grice’s writings on the notion of presupposition are not extensive. Grice (1989: 269–82) contains an essay titled ‘Presupposition and conversational implicature’ that discusses some issues related to presupposition.1 In this essay, henceforth referred to as P&CI, Grice is concerned with the debate between Russell and Strawson as to whether the implications of existence and uniqueness associated with the use of definite descriptions in sentences of the form ‘The F is G’ are best thought of as presuppositions or as entailments. Since Grice sides with Russell, he is inclined to say that they are entailments.2 But then he has to explain why those implications survive even in negative sentences of the form ‘The F is not G’, which do not entail the existence of a unique F. Grice accepts that these implications do survive, but he argues that they are conversational implicatures rather than Strawsonian presuppositions. In the first section, I lay out Grice’s arguments for this conclusion. In the following section, I argue that all of Grice’s observations can be accommodated within a presuppositionalist framework. However, we will see that there are two rather different ways of characterizing Grice’s insights in presuppositionalist terms. I will give reasons for favouring one of these over the other. It is one that treats definite NPs as ‘soft’ presupposition triggers. In the final section, I give some reasons for thinking that the presupposition account advocated in section 2 is to be preferred to Grice’s implicature account.

The argument from convention contends that the regular use of definite descriptions as referential devices strongly implies that a referential semantic convention underlies such usage. On the presumption that definite descriptions also participate in a quantificational semantic convention, the argument from convention has served as an argument for the thesis that the English definite article is ambiguous. Here, I revisit this relatively new argument. First, I address two recurring criticisms of the argument from convention: (1) its alleged tendency to overgenerate and (2) its apparent evidential inadequacy. These criticisms are found wanting. Second, following Zacharska (Univ Coll Lond Work Pap Linguist 22:56–63, 2010), I argue that while the argument from convention does alter the landscape of logical possibilities insofar as it provides good grounds for treating Donnellan’s (Philos Rev 75:281–304, 1966) referential–attributive distinction as having truth-conditional consequences, the argument from convention nonetheless fails to demonstrate that ‘the’ requires two lexical entries.

In this chapter we review Keith Donnellan's introduction of a distinction in definite descriptions between referential and attributive uses. Saul Kripke (and others) have argued that Donnellan's referential use is nothing more than a variety of speaker's reference – that is, not semantic. However, others (including Donnellan) have argued that the distinction is indeed a semantic one. This chapter supports that position by responding to arguments against it being semantic, and reviewing and developing arguments in favor of the semantic view.

In this paper I provide novel arguments for the predicative approach to proper names, which claims that argument proper names are definite descriptions containing a naming predicate (the individual called X). I first argue that modified proper names, such as the incomparable Maria Callas or the other Francis Bacon cannot be handled on the hypothesis that argument proper names have no internal structure and uniformly denote entities. I then discuss cases like every Adolf, which would normally be interpreted as every individual named Adolf and show that the predicative approach to proper names can straightforwardly account for the distribution of a detectable naming component in proper names. Finally, I address the issue of proper names used as common nouns (such as a Rembrandt or the new Madonna) and plural proper names (e.g., the Beatles) and demonstrate that they do not form a homogenous group yet can be clearly distinguished on both syntactic and semantic grounds from proper names involving a detectable naming component.

Book synopsis: New work on a hot topic by an outstanding team of authors At the intersection of several central areas of philosophy It is the linguistic job of singular terms to pick out the objects that we think or talk about. But what about singular terms that seem to fail to designate anything, because the objects they refer to don't exist? We can employ these terms in meaningful thought and talk, which suggests that they are succeeding in fulfilling their representational task. A team of leading experts presents new essays on the much-debated problem of empty reference and thought. In the 1960s and 1970s Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam initiated a revolution in the then standard conception of reference—a concept at the core of philosophical inquiry. The repercussions of the revolution, particularly felt in metaphysics and epistemology, were soon refined by other influential writers such as Tyler Burge, Gareth Evans, and John Perry. They argued that some linguistic and mental representations have contents individuated by what they are about—by ordinary referents of expressions such as proper names, indexicals, definite descriptions and common nouns, i.e. by planets, people or natural kinds. The view was at odds with a central philosophical presumption at that time: that cognitive and linguistic access to objective reality is indirect and accidental, mediated by general descriptive characterizations, the only constitutive semantic feature of the expressions; hence its ontological and epistemological repercussions. A turning-point in the debate about how linguistic and mental representation reach external contents concerned the nature of empty mental and linguistic representations, framed by means of the very same expressions crucially invoked in the Donnellan-Kaplan-Kripke-Putnam arguments. The papers in this volume address different aspects of reference and thought about the (apparently) non-existent.

Stephen P. Schwartz. Preface. Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 9–10. - Stephen P. Schwartz. Introduction. Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 13–41. - Keith S. Donnellan. Reference and definite descriptions. A reprint of XL 276 (12). Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 42–65. - Saul Kripke. Identity and necessity. Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 66–101. (Reprinted from Identity and individuation, edited by Milton K. Munitz, New York University Press, New York 1971, pp. 135–164.) - Hilary Putnam. IS semantics possible?Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 102–118. (Reprinted from Language, belief, and metaphysics, edited by Howard E. Kiefer and Milton K. Munitz, Contemporary philosophic thought, vol. 11, State University of New York Press, Albany 1970, pp. 50–63.) - Hilary Putnam. Meaning and reference. Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 119–132. (Reprinted from The journal of philosophy, vol. 70 (1973), pp. 699–711.) - William K. Goosens. Underlying trait terms. Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 133–154. - W. V. Quine. Natural kinds. Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 155–175. (Reprinted from Essays in honor of Carl D. Hempel, A tribute on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, edited by Nicholas Rescher et al., D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht 1969, pp. 5–23.) - Irving M. Com. Essence and accident. Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 176–191. (Reprinted from The journal of philosophy, vol. 51 (1954), pp. 706–719.) - Gareth Evans. The causal theory of names. Naming, necessity, and natural kinds, edited by Stephen P. Schwartz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London1977, pp. 192–215. (Reprinted from Aristotelian Society supplementary volume XLVII, London 1973, pp. 187–208.) - Volume 47 Issue 4

In this paper, I discuss expressions such as ‘Dad’, ‘Mum’, ‘Grandpa’, etc., which are called ‘quasi-proper names’. These expressions can be used both to refer to a thing or person in an assertion in which a predicate is assigned to the referent expressed by the quasi-proper-name and to call somebody in particular (John!). In so far as they are indexical expressions, they are even more directly referential than proper names and guarantee discourse continuity to a greater extent than proper names (even if this appears to some to be controversial). To understand the working of quasi-proper names, I introduce a semantic rule that transforms nouns or definite descriptions into proper names and quasi-proper names, making the conceptual elements present in those expressions inactive and introducing a direct route from the proper name to the referent. Such a rule is synchronic, although it has diachronic consequences. Quasi-proper names can stimulate a debate about the function and role of proper names across cultures. I consider a number of expressions similar to quasi-proper names and I add the class of quasi-quasi-proper names (cases in which a term similar to a quasi-proper name can be used in vocatives but not in a subject-predicate structure, or, vice-versa, it can be used in a subject-predicate structure but not for vocatives).

In his lectures on logical atomism Russell maintains that (1) the proper names of natural language are really definite descriptions, and (2) indexicals are also definite descriptions, to the extent that they are used to refer to ordinary objects. In spite of the dominant referentialist trend championed by Kripke and Kaplan, there are good reasons to still think that Russell is right in holding these views. However, Russell’s descriptivist account of proper names and indexicals makes their meanings unpalatably idiosyncratic or subjective. This essay discusses and compares some ways in which this subjectivism can be avoided.

Alliterative Licence and the Rhetorical Use of Proper Names in The Battle of Maldon

Perceptual demonstratives-terms such as ‘this man’ or ‘that building’, used to refer to currently perceived o jects-seem to be fundamental to our understanding of concepts and language. There are two ways in which they display this fundamental character. First, they are used in the explanation of observational concepts like ‘red’ or ‘square’. These terms are learnt in the context of propositions like, ‘that chair is red’, or ‘that box is square’, where the demonstrative refers to a currently perceived object. Secondly, other types of reference to concrete objects, such as our use of proper names, seem to depend, directly or indirectly, on our use of perceptual demonstratives. The use of a name like ‘Sigmund Freud’ is ultimately dependent on it having been possible to introduce and use the name in contexts such as ‘this man is Sigmund Freud’. And even a singular term such as “the Big Bang’ which does not refer to a perceptible event at all, can refer only because we understand how its referent is causally connected to o jects which we can perceptually demonstrate.

Onymická složka literárního díla – zejména antroponyma a toponyma – vytváří funkční systém vázaný mimo jiné na autorskou poetiku, stylové a dobové konvence a neopominutelně též na daný literární žánr, resp. subžánr nebo modus. Právě genologické aspekty a motivace užití proprií v uměleckém textu přitom patří v soudobé literární onomastice mezi méně traktované, jakkoliv se dotýkají širokého pole lingvistických i literárněvědných otázek, perspektiv a problémů. Náš případový komparativní příspěvek se v těchto intencích soustředí na recentně výrazně produktivní žánrovou oblast dystopií a analýzu její onymické krajiny, konkrétně abionym; zkoumaný korpus tvoří jedenáct česky a francouzsky psaných próz vydaných po roce 1989. Vzhledem k charakteru těchto příbuzných žánrů (mj. reprezentace budoucnosti, ale často rovněž prolínání s předcházející přítomností, anticipační výstavba, negativní obraz vývoje usilující o realističnost, uvěřitelnost) zaměřujeme pozornost primárně na distribuci užití jmen autentických a realistických, příp. autorských. Sledujeme frekvenci těchto proprií a jejich funkce v (re)modelování fikčního světa ve vztahu ke světu aktuálnímu se záměrem charakterizovat případné typické rysy, tendence nebo variace – na těchto základech studie dochází ke konstatování, že vysledované a interpretované charakteristiky onymie lze hodnotit jako imanentní, v dané genologické kategorii soudobé literatury šířeji platné.