Reference in Context: The Case of the English Definite Article "the"

Reference in Context: The Case of the English Definite Article the

Here’s a puzzle that has bothered logicians, philosophers and linguists since Frege (1892) and Russell (1905):  (1) is true, apparently because the subject and complement Noun Phrases refer to the same individual, so that the asserted identity holds. But if those NPs are synonymous, (2) should mean the same thing as (1). Yet it seems more informative:

(1) Barack Obama is the President of the United States in 2015

(2) Barack Obama is Barack Obama

(3) Charles knows that Barack Obama is the President of the United States in 2015

(4) Charles knows that Barack Obama is Barack Obama

The intuitive difference between the examples is reflected in the clear difference in meaning between (3) and (4), differing only in the inclusion of (1) vs. (2). One of these might be true (Charles is convinced of the self-identity of his old high school classmate Barry), the other false (but he hasn’t kept up on Barry’s career). So however these two expressions come to have the same referent in their use in (1), their abstract meanings must be different in some way.

What might those abstract meanings be, and how can they explain the pattern observed in (1) – (4), and other differences as well?  I offer a new account of the way that reference arises in these NPs, partly as a function of lexical presuppositions about the context of utterance. I focus for brevity’s sake on definite descriptions like the President, but also offer a preliminary sketch of a presuppositionally anchored analysis of proper names.

Craige Roberts works on formal semantics and pragmatics. She is especially interested in the linguistic question of what contextual influences on interpretation can tell us about the conventional content of the constituents uttered, and the philosophical question of what contextual influences tell us about the nature of reference. She is Professor of Linguistics and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University. This year she is extremely fortunate to be a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies at Central European University.

Her relevant publications include “Uniqueness in definite noun phrases”. Linguistics and Philosophy 26:287-350, 2003, available at http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu//~croberts/uniqueness.pdf, and “Information Structure: Toward an integrated theory of formal pragmatics”. Semantics and Pragmatics 5.6:1-69 and 5.7:1-19, 2012, linked at http://semprag.org/article/view/sp.5.6 and (the afterword) http://semprag.org/article/view/sp.5.7.