Contextualism, Pragmatics and Definite Descriptions

• Authors: Massimiliano Vignolo
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Very few philosophers and linguists doubt that definite descriptions have attributive uses and referential uses. The point of disagreement concerns whether the difference in uses is grounded on a difference in meaning. The Ambiguity Theory holds while the Implicature Theory denies that definite descriptions are ambiguous expressions, having an attributive meaning and a referential meaning. Contextualists have attempted to steer between the Ambiguity Theory and the Implicature Theory. I claim that the early contextualist account provided by Recanati and Bezuidehnout based on the idea that definite descriptions are semantically underdetermined and in need of a completion from the contextually available information through an optional top-down pragmatic process suffers from an explanatory gap.

Keywords

EN

contextualism; definite descriptions; referential; attributive; modulation; saturation

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Journal: Lodz Papers in Pragmatics
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 291-307

Dates

published

2011-01-01

online

2012-01-05

Contributors

author

Massimiliano Vignolo

• University of Genoa

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10016-011-0016-3