Descriptions

In 1905, Bertrand Russell argued that certain logical puzzles are solved if definite descriptions are treated as quantified expression, rather than referential expression, as Ferge had thought. Since then, philosophers and, more recently, linguists have debated the relevance of this paradigm to the study of the semantics of natural language. In Descriptions , Stephen Neale provides a sustained defense and extension of Russell’s theory, placing it in the centre of a theory of singular and nonsingular descriptive phrases and anaphoric pronouns.