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  • Emma Borg (2002). Pointing at Jack, Talking About Jill: Understanding Deferred Uses of Demonstratives and Pronouns. Mind and Language 17 (5):489–512.
    The aim of this paper is to explore the proper content of a formal semantic theory in two respects: first, clarifying which uses of expressions a formal theory should seek to accommodate, and, second, how much information the theory should contain. I explore these two questions with respect to occurrences of demonstratives and pronouns – the so- called ‘deferred’ uses – which are often classified as non-standard or figurative. I argue that, contrary to initial impressions, they must be treated as semantically identical to ordinary, perceptual uses of these expression-types, and that this finding has important repercussions for our view of the scope and limits of a semantic theory.
    Demonstratives, Misc in Philosophy of Language
    Pronouns and Anaphora in Philosophy of Language
    Pure and Impure Indexicals in Philosophy of Language
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  • 94.0Eric Swanson, Pronouns and Complex Demonstratives.
    Until recently it was standard to think that all demonstratives are directly referential. This assumption has played important roles in work on perception, reference, mental content, and the nature of propositions. But Jeff King claims that demonstratives with a nominal complement (like ‘that dog’) are quantifiers, largely because there are cases in which the semantic value of such a “complex demonstrative” is not simply an object (2001). Although I agree with King that such cases preclude a directly referential, Kaplanian semantics (...) for complex demonstratives, I will argue that without contentious further assumptions they do not vindicate King’s claim that they are quantifiers. This is because familiar pronouns act like King’s examples of complex demonstratives. Indeed, pronouns and complex demonstratives share behavior that even King overlooks. None of this pronoun behavior shows that pronouns are quantifiers, and similarly none of the analogous demonstrative behavior shows that complex demonstratives are quantifiers. (shrink)
    Complex Demonstratives in Philosophy of Language
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  • 77.2Mark Textor (2007). Frege's Theory of Hybrid Proper Names Developed and Defended. Mind 116 (464).
    Does the English demonstrative pronoun 'that' (including complex demonstratives of the form 'that F') have sense and reference? Unlike many other philosophers of language, Frege answers with a resounding 'No'. He held that the bearer of sense and reference is a so-called 'hybrid proper name' (Künne) that contains the demonstrative pronoun and specific circumstances of utterance such as glances and acts of pointing. In this paper I provide arguments for the thesis that demonstratives are hybrid proper names. After outlining why (...) Frege held the hybrid proper name view, I will defend it against recent criticism, and argue that it is superior to views that take demonstrative pronouns to be the bearer of semantic properties. (shrink)
    Names in Philosophy of Language
    Fregean Theories of Meaning in Philosophy of Language
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  • 73.8Mika Oksanen, Doxastic Logic of Demonstratives; Indexical and Reflexive Pronouns in Ascriptions of Propositional Attitudes.
    In this article I will develop the first steps of a wholly general theory of how indexical and reflexive pronouns function in propositional attitude ascriptions. This will involve a theory of ascriptions of de se beliefs and de se utterances, which can probably be also generalized so as to apply to ascriptions of other attitudes. It will also involve a theory about the ascriptions of beliefs or other attitudes a person has at a time about what happens then (attitudes de (...) praesente, as they are sometimes called) and the beliefs of a person concerning the one whom he is addressing (which I might call beliefs de recipiente) etc.. The most distinctive aspect of the theory will be that I will argue that many phenomena associated with such ascriptions that are nowadays most often viewed as pragmatic are semantic. I will use a system of symbolic logic to formalize such ascriptions. I will start from David Kaplan’s Logic of Demonstratives and generalize it into a logic I call Doxastic Logic of Demonstratives, DLD. Crucial to the semantics of the logic will be an exact definition of the adjustments of a character from one context to another. (shrink)
    Indexicals, Misc in Philosophy of Language
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  • 68.7David Braun (2008). Complex Demonstratives and Their Singular Contents. Linguistics and Philosophy 31 (1).
    This paper presents a semantic and pragmatic theory of complex demonstratives. According to this theory, the semantic content of a complex demonstrative, in a context, is simply an object, and the semantic content of a sentence that contains a complex demonstrative, in a context, is a singular proposition. This theory is defended from various objections to direct reference theories of complex demonstratives, including King's objection from quantification into complex demonstratives.
    Complex Demonstratives in Philosophy of Language
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  • 63.7David Braun (1996). Demonstratives and Their Linguistic Meanings. Noûs 30 (2):145-173.
    In this paper, I present a new semantics for demonstratives. Now some may think that David Kaplan (1989a,b) has already given a more than satisfactory semantics for demonstratives, and that there is no need for a new one. But I argue below that Kaplan's theory fails to describe the linguistic meanings of 'that' and other true demonstratives. My argument for this conclusion has nothing to do with cognitive value, belief sentences, or other such contentious matters in semantics and the philosophy (...) of mind. Rather, it appeals to the obvious fact that there can be true utterances of certain sentences containing several occurrences of the same demonstrative (for instance, 'That is taller than that'). My argument can be answered by making a fairly modest revision in Kaplan's theory. But I believe that the resulting revised version of Kaplan's theory ignores or distorts various important semantic features of 'that'. Thus I ultimately argue in favor of a more substantial departure from Kaplan's theory. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the theory I favor is that it ascribes three distinct sorts of meanings to demonstratives. (shrink)
    Character and Content in Philosophy of Language
    Demonstratives, Misc in Philosophy of Language
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  • 61.0Emma Borg (2000). Complex Demonstratives. Philosophical Studies 97 (2).
    Some demonstrative expressions, those we might term ‘bare demonstratives’, appear without any appended descriptive content (e.g. occurrences of ‘this’ or ‘that’ simpliciter). However, it seems that the majority of demonstrative occurrences do not follow this model. ‘Complex demonstratives’ is the collective term I shall use for phrases formed by adjoining one or more common nouns to a demonstrative expression (e.g. ‘that cat’, ‘this happy man’) and I will call the combination of predicates immediately concatenated with the demonstrative in such phrases (...) the ‘matrix’ of the expression. The question, then, is how we should construe the logical form of such expressions within a semantic theory for our language; and I wish to suggest that some recent answers to this question are, in fact, mistaken. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, I wish to highlight two (often underlying) assumptions about the nature of noun phrases in general, and suggest that, if they are both adopted, they apparently constrain the possible accounts of the logical form of complex demonstratives to just three options. The second and third parts of the paper will be concerned with expanding these options and arguing that none of them are adequate; thus the major part of the paper is concerned with the negative claim that the most obvious moves to make in this area must actually fail on closer inspection. The fourth and final section will then (very briefly) sketch the positive thesis of the paper: that we can deliver a clear and cohesive account of complex demonstratives, armed simply with elements which we will draw from David Kaplan’s theory of demonstratives, but only at the cost of rejecting (or at least refining) one assumption we recognised initially. (shrink)
    Complex Demonstratives in Philosophy of Language
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  • 60.3Eros Corazza (2002). `She' and `He': Politically Correct Pronouns. Philosophical Studies 111 (2).
    It is argued that the pronouns `she' and `he' are disguised complexdemonstratives of the form `that female/male'. Three theories ofcomplex demonstratives are examined and shown to be committed to theview that `s/he' turns out to be an empty term when used to refer toa hermaphrodite. A fourth theory of complex demonstratives, one thatis hermaphrodite friendly, is proposed. It maintains that complexdemonstratives such as `that female/male' and the pronoun `s/he' can succeed in referring to someone independently of his or her gender.This (...) theory incorporates: (i) a multiple proposition view, i.e., theview that an utterance of a sentence containing a complex demonstrativeexpresses two (or more) propositions, namely the background proposition(s)and the official one; (ii) that the referent of a complex demonstrativeis a component of the official proposition expressed whether it satisfiesthe nominal part of the demonstrative expression or not; (iii) that thenominal part of a complex demonstrative only affect the background proposition(s) and (iv) that the utterance inherits its truth-value onlyfrom the official proposition. (shrink)
    Pronouns and Anaphora in Philosophy of Language
    Feminist Philosophy of Language in Philosophy of Language
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