Forthcoming ine Philosophical Review Names are Variables Anders J. Schoubye† Abstract millianism and descriptivism are without question the two most prominent views with respect to the semantics of proper names. However, debates between millians and descriptivists have tended to focus on a fairly narrow set of linguistic data and an equally narrow set of problems, mainly how to solve with Frege's puzzle and how to guarantee rigidity. In this paper, I focus on a set of data that has been given less attention in these debates-namely so-called predicative uses, bound uses, and shied uses of names. I rst show that these data points seem to favor a descriptivist view over a millian view, but I then introduce an alternative view of names that not only provides a simple and elegant way of dealing with the data, but also retains rigidity without becoming subject to the problems raised by Frege's puzzle.is is the view that names are variables, also called variabilism. Introduction: A Familiar Debate Millianism e orthodox view in philosophy of language with respect to proper names is millianism.is is the view that the meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference and consequently that a name contributes only its reference to the truth conditions of a sentence. In a standard intensional semantics, the lexical entry for a name would † Versions of this paper were presented at PhLiP, the University of Copenhagen, and the memorial session in honor of Delia Fara at the Pacic APA. I would like to thank the audiences at these venues for their comments and questions. I also would like to thank Brian Rabern for numerous fruitful discussions that helped improve the paper signicantly. Finally, this paper is dedicated to the memory of Delia Fara who I considered both a mentor and a friend. therefore be the following.1 JDel NajaKc,g,i = Del Naja is simple analysis of names, owing to Mill (1843) but popularized by Kripke (1980), has a wide array of signicant upshots, but one in particular is generally agreed to be especially important, namely that names are rigid designators. Rigid designation is dened as follows. rigid designation A term τ is a rigid designator i for all worlds w and w′: JτKc,g,w = JτKc,g,w′ In other words, an expression τ is rigid i its reference is constant across possible worlds and it is easy to see that names satisfy this constraint given a millian analysis. e extension of a name is insensitive to parameters of the index, so shiing parameters of the index will never result in shiing the extension of the name. Hence, the extension of any name remains constant across all possible worlds. is upshot of the Millian view is signicant, because it concurs with predominant judgments about the meaning of names in certain modal and counterfactual environments. For example, if the modal 'might' in (1) is used to make a claim about what is metaphysically possible (i.e. as an existential quantier over metaphysically possible worlds), it is widely agreed that the sentence is false. (1) Del Naja might not have been Del Naja. If names are rigid, the truth of (1) would require the existence of a metaphysically possible world where the law of identity fails. Since, presumably, such a world is impossible, the Millian analysis correctly predicts that (1) is false-indeed necessarily false. e Millian analysis is, however, not without problems, the most famous being Frege's Puzzle.is is the observation that co-extensional names may dier in what Frege referred to as cognitive value (1892, 151). To illustrate, suppose that the names 1 I follow standard practice of using double brackets, J⋅K, as a function from expressions to semantic values, c as a context of utterance, g as a variable assignment (a function from natural numbers to individuals in the domain), and i as an index. In this paper, I will make the simplifying assumption that the index consists of only a possible world and therefore suppress i in favor of a simple world-parameter. Hence, JDel NajaKc,g,i is a function from an expression, a context c, an assignment g, and a possible world w to the semantic value (the extension) of that expression at c, g, and w. 2 'Del Naja' and 'Banksy' are co-extensional. Given this, the millian analysis predicts that (2) and (3) have identical meanings.2 (2) Del Naja is Del Naja. (3) Del Naja is Banksy. e sentence in (2) is intuitively uninformative and knowable a priori; coming to know that the famous rapper and producer from Massive Attack, Robert Del Naja, is self-identical seems trivial as this follows straightforwardly from the law of identity. By contrast, the sentence in (3) is informative and knowable only a posteriori; coming to know that Del Naja is identical to the infamous street artist and political activist, Banksy, seems highly informative, especially as Banksy's identity is generally unknown. Moreover, acquiring this information seems to require something beyond purely non-empirical reasoning. Accordingly, it would be natural to conclude that (2) and (3) must dier in meaning. In an eort to resist this conclusion, one could argue that this alleged dierence in cognitive value is irrelevant with respect to semantic analysis. Aer all, if 'Del Naja' and 'Banksy' really are co-referential, one might think that these sentences must have identical truth conditions. And since semantics plausibly deals in truth conditions and not cognitive values (whatever those are), one might argue that a dierence in cognitive value need not be captured by the semantic analysis. However, as is well known, there are cases where the substitution of co-extensional names do intuitively aect the truth conditions, for example when names occur within the scope of propositional attitude verbs. Consider (4) and (5). (4) Goldie believes that Del Naja is Del Naja. (5) Goldie believes that Del Naja is Banksy. It is relatively easy to imagine a context where (4) is intuitively true, but (5) is intuitively false. Given this, it seems natural to conclude that the truth conditions of 2 I should provide some background to this example: Robert Del Naja (also known as '3D') is a British musician and member of the Bristol-based trioMassive Attack. Banksy is a street artist who is famous mainly for his political art, namely murals and installations that have appeared in major cities across Europe and the United States. Banksy's identity is generally unknown, but some people believe that Del Naja is Banksy. One reason is that Banksy's early work grew out of the underground grati scene in Bristol which is also where Del Naja started his career. Moreover, some people have noticed that Banksy's murals have consistently appeared in places where Massive Attack were concurrently on tour, cf. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/banksy-robert-del-najamassive-attack-art-who-is-he-identity-real-name-grati-music-similarities-a7805741.html. I have no rm opinion on the plausibility of this theory, but simply note that this is makes for an excellent illustration of Frege's puzzle. 3 these sentences must dier. However, if it is assumed that the meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference, then the content of (4) is ipso facto semantically identical to the content of (5), and so it is not clear that such a dierence in truth conditions can be captured.3 Consequently, it seems that Frege's puzzle is a prima facie problem for millianism aer all. Much more could be said about the virtues and vices of millianism, but for now let's turn to the main opposing view. Descriptivism In philosophy of language, the term descriptivism refers to a family of broadly related views. What these views have in common is that names are analyzed as having some kind of fundamentally descriptive meaning. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on one subclass of these views, namely so-called metalinguistic descriptivism. Generally speaking, this is the view that the truth conditional contribution of a name is some kind of descriptive element involving a naming constraint.4 For example, the meaning of the name in 'Del Naja' (6) is sometimes argued to be equivalent to a denite description whose restrictor expresses one of the naming constraints in (6a)–(6d).5 (6) Del Naja is a musician. a. e person called Del Naja is a musician. (Kneale, 1960) b. e thing which is the bearer of 'Del Naja' is a musician. (Katz, 2001) c. e /dєl Naja/ is a musician. (Matushansky, 2006) d. e Del Naja is a musician. (Fara, 2015) When names are analyzed as contributing some kind of descriptive content, this raises an immediate question about the extent to which this is reected in the syntax. ere are several positions that one may take with respect to this question. One option is what I will refer to simply as semantic descriptivism. is is the view 3 Some people deny that there is a truth conditional dierence between (4) and (5), e.g. Salmon (1986), but I assume that the claim that there is an intuitive dierence in truth conditions, i.e. that one can conceive of a possible state of aairs in which (4) is true while (5) is false, is generally accepted. 4 is means that I am ignoring one particular brand of descriptivism championed by Frege (1892) and Russell (1905), sometimes referred to as famous deeds descriptivism, and various cluster-type variants of these views, e.g. Searle (1958).is is partly because I consider metalinguistic views more plausible, but also for simplicity.e problems raised in this paper for metalinguistic descriptivism apply equally to these views. 5 I remain agnostic as regards the plausibility of these suggestions since it is irrelevant for the purposes of this paper.is is simply to emphasize that even within the subclass of metalinguistic views, there is still disagreement regarding the formulation of the naming constraint. 4 that names are syntactically simple but have the semantics of a Fregean denite description.e lexical entry for the name 'Del Naja' would therefore look something like (7).6 (7) JDel NajaKc,g,w ={ (ιx.Del Naja(x) in w) if ∣{x: Del Naja(x)}∣ = 1 in w undened if ∣{x: Del Naja(x)}∣ ≠ 1 in w On this view, there is a signicant syntactic dierence between names and denite descriptions; the logical form (LF) of the sentence in (8) is (8a) while the LF of the sentence in (9) is (9a). However, given the semantic descriptivist analysis of names, the meaning of (8) and (9), i.e. the truth conditional content of (8) and (9), is equivalent. (8) Del Naja is a musician. a. [s [np Del Naja] [vp is a musician]] (9) e person called Del Naja is a musician. a. [s [dp [d the] [np person called Del Naja]] [vp is a musician]] Another option is what I refer to as syntactic descriptivism.is is the view that names only appear syntactically simple, but are in fact full-edged denite descriptions at LF. So, for example, while the surface form of (8) might intuitively suggests a syntactic structure similar to (8a), it actually has a more complex syntactic structure, namely that given by (9a). In other words, according to syntactic descriptivism, names are syntactically complex. Note that this is a view solely about the syntax of names, so it is neutral with respect to the semantics of denite descriptions. In particular, syntactic descriptivism is compatible with both a referential analysis and a (Russellian) quanticational analysis of denite descriptions. Finally, there is predicativist descriptivism or simply predicativism.is is the view that names are predicates (or count nouns to be precise) with a corresponding predicative meaning, for example (10). (10) JDel NajaKc,g,w = [λx. x is called Del Naja in w]7 6 In this lexical entry '(ιx.Del Naja(x) in w)' is used as a name in the metalanguage for the unique individual called Del Naja in w. 7 Just as there is disagreement among proponents of metalinguistic descriptivism in general about the nature of the naming constraint, there is also disagreement internally among proponents of predicativism about how to explicate the meaning of the predicate. For example, some proponents of predicativismmaintain that names should be individuated by phonology rather than orthography and that this has to be reected in the semantics, cf. Matushansky (2006, 2008). Worries about vicious 5 is view may seem to face an immediate and obvious problem, namely that any bare occurrence of a count noun in argument position of a predicate is ungrammatical, cf. (11) and (12). (11) *Tiger is a musician. (12) *Carrot is a musician. So, if names are count nouns, sentences such as (8) should be ungrammatical. However, the key predicativist assumption is that if a name occurs in argument position of a predicate, as in e.g. (8), its immediate syntactic sister is a phonologically null denite determiner.e LF of (8) is therefore the same as that given by (9a) except that the denite determiner is unpronounced (indicated below using strikethrough), cf. (13) and (13a). (13) Del Naja is a musician. a. [s [dp [d the] [np person called Del Naja]] [vp is a musician]] is phonologically null determiner composes with the name (i.e. the predicate) to form a denite description, the content of which is then contributed to the truth conditions of the sentence. In other words, like syntactic descriptivism, predicativism is committed to some non-trivial theoretical assumptions about the syntax of sentences containing names. However, it is important to notice that predicativism is not committed to the assumption that names are syntactically complex. Names are mere count nouns according to this view. is may seem a fairly innocuous dierence between predicativism and syntactic descriptivism, but this is in fact an advantage for predicativism. I discuss this issue in more detail later.8 One of the main virtues of descriptivist views in general, and indeed one of the features that originally motivated these views, is that the problem raised by Frege's Puzzle never arises.is is easily demonstrated. If the meanings of the names in (2) and (3) are equivalent to two denite descriptions, say 'the person called Del Naja' and 'the person called Banksy', it is obvious why (2) is uninformative and knowable a priori whereas (3) is informative and only knowable a posteriori. Relatedly, it is also circularity have also been raised to this particular aspect of the view, cf. Gray (2012, 2014, 2017). As before, these issues are largely orthogonal to my main points, so I will ignore the issue here and simply assume the simple 'x is called N' formulation. For those worried that this formulation involves a use-mention confusion, see Fara (2011). 8 As regards the syntax of names, the locus classicus for syntactic descriptivism is Russell (1905). For extensive arguments in favor of the syntactic assumptions underlying predicativism, see Fara (2015). 6 easy to explain why someone might not believe that Del Naja is identical to Banksy despite believing that Del Naja is self-identical. For example, one might simply not be aware that the unique individual instantiating the property of being called Del Naja is identical to the unique individual instantiating the property of being called Banksy. e technical explanation of these predictions is that co-extensional denite descriptions need not be co-intensional. What a denite description denotes depends on the extension of its descriptive predicate at the world of evaluation and given that extensions of predicates may vary across possible worlds, a description may therefore denote one individual at one world and denote a dierent individual at another world. In conclusion, if names are analyzed as descriptions, the reference of a name may change across metaphysically possible worlds and this straightforwardly explains why (5) can be false while (4) is true and, plausibly, why (2) and (3) are judged to dier in cognitive value. However, adopting a descriptivist analysis necessitates giving up rigidity since rigid designation entails that co-extensional names are also co-intensional. And as Kripke (1980) famously observed, this is a problem for descriptivism, because not only is (1) incorrectly predicted to have a true interpretation, it is also predicted to be synonymous with (14). (14) Del Naja might not have been the person called Del Naja. Yet, standard judgments indicate that (1) and (14) are not synonymous as (1) is intuitively false, while (14) seems clearly true. Hence, while descriptivism avoids the problem raised by Frege's puzzle, this comes at a price, namely relinquishing the rigidity of names. A New Pathway for Settling the Debate about Names e reason I am here rehashing these already familiar and widely debated issues is to highlight a simple point, namely that the most debated strengths/weaknesses of the most prominent semantic theories of names are direct inverses. While millianism struggles with the problem raised by Frege's Puzzle, this is a consequence of the prediction that names are rigid designators. By contrast, while descriptivism avoids the problem raised by Frege's Puzzle, it does so at the cost of predicting that names are non-rigid. Historically, the philosophical literature on the semantics of names has focused heavily on how these two theories might resolve their respective problems. Yet, given the interdependent nature of these problems, one might think that alternative data points should considered in order to settle the debate.e aim of this paper is, rst, 7 to draw attention to a range of somewhat neglected data points that once analyzed suggest that descriptivism is empirically superior to millianism, and, second, to argue that there is an underexplored alternative to millianism that handles the additional data points with relative ease yet retains the prediction that names are rigid without being subject to the problems raised by Frege's puzzle!is is the view oen referred to as variabilismwhichmost recently has been defended by Cumming (2008) and Schoubye (2017). If this is correct, this view would be empirically superior to both millianism and various versions of descriptivism and hence should be considered a serious contender in this debate. In the next section, I detail a variety of uses of names that have received limited attention in the literature on the semantics of names.e purpose is to evaluate the extent to which the standard theories, i.e. millianism and descriptivism, can deal with this data. Neglected Data Points Predicative Uses of Names A predicative use of a name is a use where it seems to function syntactically and semantically as a predicate as for example in (15)–(20).9 (15) At least three Ottos attended the meeting. (16) ere is more than one Aksel at the meeting. (17) Many Sarahs attended the meeting. (18) Every Louise attended the meeting. (19) e Michael who married a Louise attended the meeting. (20) Most Jespers do not attend meetings. Syntactically, the names in these sentences are composed with a quanticational determiner ('more than one', 'at least three', 'many', 'every', 'most') and hence constituents of determiner phrases (DPs). Semantically the names appear to express properties, namely name-bearing properties.e most natural interpretation of, for example, (15) is that at least three people called Otto attended the meeting. 9 Sloat (1969) and Burge (1973) were, to my knowledge, the rst to seriously consider these uses, but their discussions were mostly ignored or dismissed.is seemed to change only about ten years ago when several proponents of predicativism, mainly Elbourne (2005), Matushansky (2006, 2008), and Fara (2015), started emphasizing the importance of this data. When presenting this material, I nd that these uses of names are sometimes dismissed as only marginally felicitous and/or extremely rare, but since it is easy to nd multiple naturally occurring examples of these uses in both English and a wide variety of other languages, I am not aware of any convincing reason to accept those claims. 8 Predicative uses of names pose an immediate problem for millianism. ese uses cannot plausibly be analyzed as referential terms as referential terms do not normally express properties nor function syntactically as immediate constituents of determiners phrases. In other words, predicative uses seem to directly contradict the Millian thesis that the meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference.10 As for descriptivism, predicative uses of names might seem less problematic as names on these views are assumed to express property-involving meanings- properties that happen to coincide with those expressed by the predicative uses of names in sentences such as (15)–(20). Yet, to what extent this data is friendly to descriptivism depends in large part on the syntactic and semantic assumptions underlying the particular views. For example, if one assumes that names are syntactically simple but have the semantics of denite descriptions, i.e. semantic descriptivism, then the cases in (15)–(20) are clearly problematic. Semantically, a denite description cannot compose with a quanticational determiner, so it is unclear how such a view would compositionally predict the right truth conditions. Alternatively, if it is assumed that names are syntactically complex, for example along the lines of syntactic descriptivism, then one should predict that the sentences in (15)–(20) are ungrammatical as in English a denite description cannot combine syntactically with various quanticantional determiners. In short, it is not clear that predicative uses of names are more easily captured by descriptivist views in general. However, there is one descriptivist view that handles this data seamlessly, namely predicativism. If names are analyzed as count nouns, the syntactic and semantic behavior of a name should presumably parallel the behavior of every other count noun. As a result, predicativists predict that names should be able to combine with quanticational determiners just like all other count nouns and this is exactly what the data suggests. So, it seems that with respect to predicative uses of names, predicativism has a signicant advantage over both millianism, but also various other descriptivist views.11 10 Now, one frequent and fairly natural response to this prima facie problem is to argue that names are simply systematically ambiguous between referential and predicative types and that millianism is only intended to provide an analysis of the former. However, such an ambiguity view is problematic for a variety of reasons. I will discuss these reasons in detail in later sections. 11 As regards the distributional data concerning names and determiners, I am ignoring one particular complication, namely that names cannot in general occur with 'the', i.e. 'e Del Naja is a musician' is normally judged to be anomalous. Building on observations from Sloat (1969), Fara (2015) oers an elegant explanation of this fact that supports a general predicativist view, but see Jeshion (2017) for a response.ese are somewhat nitty gritty details that do not substract from the general conclusion that predicativism is signicantly better positioned to account for predicative uses of names than both millianism and various other types of descriptivist views. 9 Bound Names A bound use of name is an occurrence of a name in argument position of a predicate where the meaning of the name intuitively co-varies with some antecedent, typically an indenite determiner phrase. For example, consider the uses of the names in (21) and (22) below. (21) If a child is christened 'Bambi', Disney will sue Bambi's parents. (Geurts, 1997, 321) (22) Every woman who has a husband called John and a lover called Gerontius takes only Gerontius to the Rare Names Convention. (Elbourne, 2005) e names in these sentences do not intuitively refer to some specic individual. Rather, (21) seems to express a general claim about individuals named 'Bambi' (and what happens to their parents) and (22) seems to express a general claim about individuals named 'Gerontius' (and what conventions they get to attend). However, if it is assumed that the meaning of the above occurrences of 'Bambi' and 'Gerontius' is simply their respective referents, the co-varying interpretations cannot be captured. As a result, bound uses of names also appear to pose at least a prima facie problem for the millian thesis that the meaning of name is exhausted by its reference. As for descriptivism, bound uses of names are to some extent expected. It is well known that denite descriptions have similar kinds of bound (or co-varying) interpretations, see e.g. (23) below. (23) In every philosophy department in the country, at least one student aced the exam in Logic 1. (23) has a natural interpretationwhere the description 'the exam in Logic 1' co-varies with philosophy departments. In other words, this sentence has an interpretation where it is true if the students in question aced dierent exams. So, if the meaning of a name is equivalent to some denite description, one should expect that names too are susceptible to these kinds of bound interpretations. How exactly bound interpretations of denite descriptions are best syntactically and semantically analyzed is, admittedly, a non-trivial issue and it seems likely that the best explanation of bound uses of names will vary depending on the type of descriptivism in question. For example, Elbourne (2005) who is a proponent of predicativism, argues that denite descriptions contain a free individual variable that is either bound by a higher quantier or saturated by the context.is assumption is then used to explain how the bound interpretation of 'the exam in Logic 1' arises for (23). Izumi (2013), another proponent of predicativism, adopts a situation semantics where the description is associated with a bindable situation variable that gives rise 10 to dierent denotations relative to dierent situations. However, notwithstanding the complexities of capturing bound interpretations of denite descriptions, the main point here is that if names are analyzed as denite descriptions and it is antecedently acknowledged that descriptions can have bound interpretations, sentences such as (2) and (3) do not pose a problem for descriptivist views. Whatever theory best captures standard bound interpretations of denite descriptions will also suce to capture bound interpretations of names. In addition to the intra-sentential bound uses of names in (21) and (22), names also have cross-sentential bound uses, for example (24). (24) ere is a gentleman in Hertfordshire by the name of 'Ernest'. Ernest is engaged to two women. (Cumming, 2008, 526) e proposition expressed by the second sentence of (24) is intuitively a general existential proposition rather than a singular proposition.at is, the truth of this sentence does not depend on a specic individual. It is intuitively true as long as some Ernest or other is engaged to two women. Suppose, for instance, that I deduce [24] solely from onomastic and marital trends in the Home Counties. In that case, I have no particular Ernest in mind when I utter [24], and my claim must be a general, existential one. (Cumming, 2008, 536) So, as should be obvious, cross-sententially bound uses of names are equally problematic for themillian thesis that themeaning of a name is exhausted by its reference. And, once again, this result is to some extent anticipated by descriptivism since denite descriptions have essentially parallel uses, i.e. uses where the meaning of the description is intuitively anaphoric on an indenite determiner phrase in an antecedent sentence, cf. (25). (25) ere is a gentleman named Ernest in Hertfordshire.e gentleman named Ernest is engaged to two women. As in (23), the proposition expressed by the second sentence of (25) is a general existential proposition and not an object-dependent propositionwhose truth depends on the relational properties of some specic individual. To conclude, it again seems that the data generally favors descriptivism over millianism. Shied Names As mentioned above, the thesis that the meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference entails rigidity. Moreover, it entails that co-extensional names are co-intensional 11 and hence immune to operators whose function is to shi the parameter governing the world of evaluation, i.e. modal operators.is is a desirable result in certain cases, for example in (2) where the modal is used to quantify over metaphysically possible worlds. However, we have already seen cases where rigidity arguably fails, namely (4) and (5). In these cases, the names are embedded in the scope of propositional attitude verbs that are standardly analyzed as modals.us, in order to predict that (4) and (5) dier in truth value, it seems that one would have to assume that the names in (4) and (5) are not rigid. However, since propositional attitude verbs are arguably some of the most semantically complex expressions in natural language, proponents of millianismmight be inclined to think that cases such as (4) and (5) are problematic mainly because our present understanding of these expressions is too primitive.12 Unfortunately, the same issue arises with simple epistemicmodals. For example, given that Banksy's identity is currently unknown, an utterance of (26) is intuitively true if we have positive reasons to believe that Del Naja is the person responsible for Banksy's work. (26) Del Naja might be Banksy. If, unbeknownst to any of us, Del Naja is in fact not Bansky, the standard view predicts that (26) is false, but this seems contrary to standard judgments in these cases.13 As is the case for predicative uses and bound uses of names, millianism again appears to face a problem with respect to shied uses. While the semantics of epistemic modals remains a controversial topic, the standard Kratzerian "contextualist" view, simplifying somewhat, is that an epistemic modal claim such as (26) is true if the prejacent, i.e. the sentence syntactically embedded under the modal, is true at some possible world compatible with the speaker's epistemic state.14 In other words, as long as it is compatible with the speaker's beliefs that Del Naja is the artist known as 'Banksy', the sentence is true. e observations about shied uses of names is just more grist to the general descriptivist mill. Remember, according to descriptivism, the names in (26) are descriptions with distinct intensions and, so, assuming a run-of-the-mill modal 12 For example, Kripke (1979) appears to hold this view. 13 As a piece of anecdotal evidence, I did come across one actual occurrence of (26) online: "Wait!? What?! Del Naja might be Banksy? Holy f!". https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/5n3vm8/on mezzanine massive attack tried to escape/. It seems quite clear that in this context both the speaker and the audience would take the sentence in (26) to be clearly true. 14 See, for example, Kratzer (1977), Kratzer (1981), von Fintel and Gillies (2011). 12 analysis of 'might', capturing the truth of (26) is straightforward. It is easy to imagine a possible world w′ that is compatible with the speaker's beliefs where the individual called Del Naja in the actual world is identical to the individual called Banksy in w′ (where this individual is assumed to have a certain set of additional properties, namely being responsible for the work generally attributed to Banksy). So, in conclusion, it again seems that the data favors descriptivism. Scoreline At this point, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that the benets of millianism are outweighed by its drawbacks. millianism struggles not only with the problems raised by Frege's puzzle, but also with capturing predicative uses, bound uses, and shied uses of names. In addition, while millianism is typically hailed for its prediction that names are rigid, the existence of shied uses of names suggests that this prediction is not always desirable. By contrast, descriptivism seems to be doing noticeably better with respect to these data points and predicativism in particular appears to struggle only with capturing the truth conditions of sentences containing names that are embedded under non-epistemic modals. For this reason, one might be tempted to conclude that predicativism is the empirically superior view. e aim of this paper is not to provide a defense of millianism nor to argue in favor of predicativism. Rather, the aim is to introduce and carefully consider themerits of an alternative view, namely variabilism. In the remainder of this paper, I will argue that variabilism provides simple and elegant explanations of predicative, bound, and shied uses of names and nevertheless manages to retain the most important virtue of millianism, namely predicting that names are rigid. Moreover, I will argue that variabilism also has a way of avoiding the problems raised by Frege's puzzle. Variabilism is in many ways very similar to millianism, so proponents of millianism would not be giving up much by embracing the variabilist analysis. roughout this paper, I will therefore tend to focus on how variabilism compares to millianism in an eort to explain why this dierent but closely related view has so much more explanatory potential. I will devote less time to a discussion of the problems with predicativism.e reason for this is partly that I have already discussed these problems in detail in Schoubye (2018), but I am also hoping that by the end of this paper it will be clear that variabilism provides a signicantly better account of the data than predicativism.. Variabilism On my preferred version of variabilism, the analysis of names is analogous to the 13 standard analysis of pronouns. Specically, names are assumed to be assignment dependent singular terms with a presuppositional constraint where this constraint is semantically equivalent to a pronominal φ-feature.15 So, the semantics of the name 'Del Naja' is the following:16 (27) JDel NajaiKc,g,w ={ g(i) if g(i) is called Del Naja in wc undened otherwise In other words, the semantic value of a nameN is a partial function that takes a variable assignment as input and returns an individual as output, namely the individual that is determined by the assignment and the name's numerical index.is function is partial, because it is only dened for an argument g if the individual determined by g has the property of being called N .e partiality of the function represents a semantic presupposition that the intended referent of the name is called that name and if this presupposition is not satised, the function will then be undened for that particular argument and yield no output. In short, if a name N is used to refer to an individual who is not called N , the presupposition associated with the name will be unsatised and hence the name will fail to semantically refer. I should emphasize that variabilism is proposed as an analysis of referential uses of names only, i.e. occurrences of names in argument position of a predicate. In other words, it is not intended to provide an immediate explanation of predicative uses of names.e general idea, however, is that a variabilist analysis of referential uses of names provides a simple and elegant explanation of (a) the relation between referential and predicative uses and (b) why predicative uses are systematically available and widely cross-linguistically attested. e similarities between a variabilist analysis of names and the standard analysis of pronouns should be fairly obvious. Pronouns are also normally analyzed as variables, i.e. assignment dependent singular terms with presuppositional constraints. For example, a standard semantics for the pronoun 'she' looks something like (28).17 15 is particular version of variabilism was rst introduced and defended in Schoubye (2017). For earlier versions of variabilism, see e.g. Yagisawa (1984), Recanati (1993), Haas-Spohn (1995), Dever (1998), and Cumming (2008). See also Heim (1998) and Lasersohn (2016). 16 A less perspicuous lexical entry, but one that better captures that the meaning of a name relative to a variable assignment is a partial function could look like this:: JDel NajaiK c,g,w = [λg′: g′(i) is called Del Naja in w c . g ′ (i)](g) = g(i) (if dened) 17 cf. Heim and Kratzer (1998, 242-245). 14 (28) JsheiKc,g,w = ⎧ ⎪⎪⎪⎪⎪ ⎨ ⎪⎪⎪⎪⎪ ⎩ g(i) if g(i) is female in wc g(i) is a singular individual in wc g(i) is not the speaker or the addressee in wc undened otherwise So, a pronoun triggers the presupposition that its referent satises its associated φ-features (i.e. person, number, and gender features). As a result, if the pronoun 'she' is used to refer to an individual who is not female (or perhaps does not identify as female), the pronoun fails to refer. ere is wide range of signicant similarities between names and pronouns and I discuss several of these in subsequent sections. For now, however, it is important to emphasize that given my proposed analysis, names are predicted to be rigid designators. Since the semantic value of a name relative to an assignment is simply an individual, modal operators cannot shi its extension. Consequently, it is never going to be the case that the extension of name can shi simply as a result of shiing the world of evaluation. e same, of course, holds for pronouns. In short, with respect to rigidity, variabilism is aligned with millianism. Given this, it might be dicult to understand how variabilism could possibly be a signicant improvement over millianism, but the crucial dierences between these views lie in the details. e following sections are dedicated to spelling these out. A Variabilist Account of the Data Variabilism and Predicative Uses of Names e only immediate way for the millian analysis to deal with predicative uses of names is to assume that names are type-ambiguous and, moreover, to maintain that the millian thesis is restricted to referential uses of names. However, one reason that predicative uses of names are still problematic for millianism is that there is no semantic link between predicative uses and referential uses.18 On the millian analysis, the truth conditional contribution of a name used referentially is nothing but the individual that the name refers to. Indeed, this is supposed to be a virtue of millianism, because if information about the name of the referent was part of its truth conditional content, this would give rise to various problems in modal contexts, e.g. counterfactual contexts where the referent has a dierent name. Despite this, it seems that some semantic information about the name of the referent is needed in order to explain certain phenomena, for example inferences such as (29) and (30). 18 e arguments in this section are abbreviated versions of arguments given by Schoubye (2017). 15 (29) Otto is a linguist. So, at least one Otto is a linguist. (30) No Aksel is a linguist. So, Aksel is not in a linguist. ese inferences are indexically valid. at is, the truth of the premise in some context c intuitively necessitates the truth of the conclusion in c. However, given a millian analysis of referential names, it is not clear how to account for these inferences. For example, in (29), the premise contains no truth conditional information about the name of the referent. For (29) to be true at a context c, all that is required is that the referent of 'Otto' is a linguist. In other words, it is technically possible for the premise to be true in c while the conclusion is false in c.19 Now, another natural response to this prima facie problem for millianism is to argue that names are not simply type-ambiguous, but rather polysemous and that the relation between referential and predicative uses therefore requires a metasemantic or pragmatic explanation. Leckie (2013), for example, takes this approach and oers a broadly pragmatic explanation of these inferences on behalf of the millian. However, notice that there inferences that involve pronouns that seem analogous to the inferences involving names. For example, these inferences are also indexically valid. (31) She is a linguist. So, at least one female individual is a linguist. (32) No female individual is a linguist. So, she is not a linguist. Of course, one could argue that a metasemantic or pragmatic explanation is also needed to account for these types of inferences, but there is a simpler and more natural explanation that is consistent with the standard analysis of pronouns, namely that the pronoun 'she' triggers a presupposition that its reference is female. Hence, if the premise in (31) is true in some context c, the conclusion straightforwardly follows in c, because the pronoun 'she' only refers if its reference is female. On the variabilist analysis of names advocated here, the exact same kind of explanation applies. Since the name 'Otto' triggers a presupposition that its referent is called Otto, then if the sentence 'Otto is a linguist' is true in some context c, it immediately follows that 'at least one individual called Otto is a linguist' is also true 19 Specically, the millian semantics fails to rule out contexts where JOttoKc,wc ∈ {x: x is a linguist in wc}, but JOttoKc,wc ∉ {x: x is called Otto in wc}, and in fact {x: x is called Otto in wc} = ∅. In this model, the premise is true, but the conclusion is false. As noted by a referee for this journal, it would be quite odd for there to be a context in which the name 'Otto' refers to someone who is not, in that context, called Otto. However, that is precisely the problem.e millian semantics does not provide resources to rule this out. Moreover, even if such contexts were subsequently ruled out by appealing to pragmatic factors, this would not change the fact that the inference is then predicted to be indexically invalid. 16 in c. Moreover, note that although this presuppositional information is semantically encoded, it is not part of the truth conditional content. A presupposition merely constrains the domain of individuals which may be assigned as semantic values, so the contribution to the truth conditions is simply an individual. is is, admittedly, not a knock down argument against millianism, but it does suggest that there is an important semantic link between predicative uses and referential uses and that the semantics of names should account for this link. Moreover, if it can be shown that names and pronouns are importantly similar, then it seems much less plausible to assume that the explanations of the apparent validity of the inferences in (29)-(30) and (31)-(32) must be fundamentally dierent.e fact that a variabilist analysis provides a simple and elegant explanation of these inferences and that this explanation is analogous to the explanation of the equivalent inferences involving pronouns is a strong reason to favor the variabilist analysis over the standard millian analysis. As regards the similarities between names and pronouns, notice that pronouns also have predicative uses.20 For example: (33) a. She loves classical music. b. Oh, is your kitten a she? (34) a. To avoid ghts over territory, there is only one male and one female in each park. b. I see. Is that the she? (35) a. I don't like him, but she's very cute. b. Both the kittens are shes. is seems to suggest that pronouns are also ambiguous between referential and predicative uses (even if the distribution of predicative uses of pronouns is smaller than the distribution of predicative names). 20 e distribution of predicative pronouns in English is, however, somewhat limited. For example, it seems doubtful that you can use pronouns with various English determiners, e.g.'*Every he has horns' or '*Some shes hunt', although I get conicting responses to this question.at said, it is worth noting that these uses are acceptable in certain other languages, e.g. Danish: 'Alle hanner har horn' and 'Nogle hunner jager' are grammatical and felicitous. Interestingly, with respect to names, we see the opposite pattern in Danish. Names cannot be pluralized, and hence cannot be used with the same range of determiners as in English. For example, the Danish equivalent of 'At least three Davids have worked on indexicals', viz. 'Mindst tre David-er har arbejdet på indeksikaler' is ungrammatical. If anything this suggest that the distribution of predicative names and pronouns is very language dependent. One other interesting point is that predicative uses of pronouns only seem capable of expressing the property associated with its gender feature.e same is the case in Danish. I do not have a good explanation for this. 17 Setting aside that postulating an ambiguity between referential and predicative names is not going to help the millian explain the validity of the inferences above, it is important to emphasize that this kind of stipulation is problematic for other reasons. First, predicative uses of names seem systematically available for names in English and are widely cross-linguistically attested.is makes it very implausible that this is a case of brute ambiguity. Second, it seems that competence with referential uses generally suces for competence with predicative uses. For example, if a speaker is competent with referential uses of the name 'Otto', typically the speaker will then also be perfectly capable of understanding or inferring the meaning of a predicative use of this expression even if it is novel. Yet, if names are simply ambiguous, then it would be unclear why competence with one use would generally suce for competence with the other. Aer all, being competent with one of the meanings of 'bank' is not generally sucient for a speaker to be competent with its alternative meanings. is means that if one stipulates that names are type-ambiguous between referential uses and predicative uses, one then needs an explanation of both the systematicity and cross-linguistic consistency of this apparent ambiguity as well as an explanation of the issue of competence. One plausible explanation, that a proponent of variabilismmight appeal to, is that predicative uses of names (and pronouns) are the result of so-called morphological zero-derivations. Consider the word 'bottles'.is the plural form of the word 'bottle' and it is the result of adding the plural sux in English '-s' to the word 'bottle'. In other words, 'bottles' is morphologically derived from the word 'bottle' and the plural sux '-s'. A zero-derivation (also called a conversion) is a case where an expression is morphologically derived from another expression, but where there is no actual change in morphology. For example, the verb 'bottle' (as in 'please bottle the wine') is morphologically derived from the noun 'bottle' (as in 'this is a good bottle of wine'). So, the expression 'bottle' is (at least) two-way ambiguous in English as it could either be the noun or the verb. ere are two strong indicators of morphological derivations. First, that competence with one expression typically suces for competence with the derived expression and, second, that there is some level of systematicity involved, i.e. that the derivational process is manifested in other structurally similar cases. For example, it is plausible that the plural noun 'bottles' is derived from its singular counterpart, because competence with the meaning of the singular generally suces for competence with the plural and the derivation of a plural noun using the sux '-s' is productive, i.e. there is a systematic pattern in English whereby nouns are pluralized 18 by adding the sux '-s'.21 By contrast, it is implausible that one of the meanings of 'bank' is morphologically zero-derived from the other because (a) competence with one meaning does not generally aord competence with the other and (b) there is no systematic pattern of nominal ambiguity of this sort in English. More generally, in order for a morphological zero-derivation to be plausible, there has to be some kind of tangible relation in meaning between the original expression and the derived expression and this is not the case with the meanings of 'bank'. Now consider the proposed variabilist analysis of names. Given this analysis, there are good reasons to think that predicative uses are morphological zeroderivations of referential uses. First, these two uses share an essential component of meaning. For example, a referential use of the name 'Otto' presupposes that its reference has a certain property, namely that its referent is called Otto.at is, the constraint that the referent of a referential use of 'Otto' must satisfy is simply to have the property of being called Otto and this is simply the meaning of 'Otto' when used predicatively. It is this relation in meaning that explains why competence with the referential use generally suces for competence with the predicative use. Second, since predicative names are ubiquitous in English, this might suggest that there is a general productive mechanism that allows the derivation of predicative names from referential names. Finally, given that predicative uses of names are widely crosslinguistically attested, one might think that this is simply more evidence that this kind of mechanism is productive in other languages. In conclusion, variabilism provides a simple and elegant explanation for the existence of predicative uses of names and their relation to referential uses of names. By contrast, this kind of explanation is not available to themilliam, because according to this view there is no information encoded in the semantics of a name that could ground the derivation of any relevant predicate. at is, if the Millian analysis is correct, there is nothing about the meaning of a referential name that is in any way similar to the meaning of its predicative counterpart. So, this means that not 21 I am not suggesting that in order for a lexical item to be the product of a zero-derivation, itmust be the case that a speaker who is competent with the original expression is automatically capable of inferring the meaning of the derived expression.ese processes are complex, context-dependent, and extra-linguistic factors oen seem to play a role. I am told that in parts of Glasgow, Scotland, the word /bottle/ can be used both to describe the act of hitting someone with a bottle ('he bottled me on the head') and the property of being drunk ('he is completely bottled'). It is unlikely that a speaker who is only competent with the noun would be able to understand these uses simply by reecting on its meaning.at said, it would be equally implausible to assume that these uses of /bottle/ are conversions of the noun if the meaning of the noun was completely absent in the derived expressions. Hitting someone on the head with a bottle clearly involves an object which would normally be aptly described using the noun 'bottle'. 19 only must the inferences above be pragmatically explained, so must the issue of competence. Alternative Predicative Uses of Names ere are a variety of other predicative uses of names that one might worry that the variabilist semantics proposed above cannot account for. One example is the use of a name to express some kind of characteristic property. For example, the name 'Einstein' is oen used to mean something like 'intellectual genius', cf. (36) below. (36) Frank is real Einstein. Similarly, the name 'Romanov' in (37) may simply refer to a specic kind of group membership, e.g. membership in the Romanov dynasty, rather than bearing the name 'Romanov'. (37) Sue is a Romanov. And 'Picasso' as used in (38) may refer to a product with a certain feature relating to Picasso, for example that it is a replica of a painting by Picasso or that it was physically signed by Picasso, and so on.22 (38) Mary bought a Picasso. I will refer to these predicative uses of names in general as 'predicative non-naming uses', but in my discussion below, I will focus mainly on characteristic property uses. e general points, however, apply to the other uses as well. In my discussion of predicative uses, I considered several problems with amillian type-ambiguity view, namely the view that names are straightforwardly ambiguous between millian referential uses and predicative uses.ese problems were mainly competence, language internal consistency, and indexical validities. I then argued that with a variabilist analysis of referential uses, these problems are easily solved and hence that a type-ambiguity view is perfectly plausible. However, the main ingredient in this variabilist solution is the presupposition associated with referential names, namely that the referent is called the relevant name. But, as the referee correctly notes, it seems that such an analysis will not have a semantic relation between referential 22 is far from exhausts the list of possible predicative uses of names, see e.g. Jeshion (2015) for further examples and in-depth discussion. It is my impression that the conventionality of these expressions vary a great deal and that some predicative uses, given the right context, can be introduced on the y. However, as should become clear in the following, I think that only predicative naming uses of names, i.e. uses where the name means 'individual called N', are particularly problematic for millianism. 20 names and predicative non-naming uses of names.e putative problem, therefore, is whether a variabilist analysis can also solve these problems for predicative nonnaming uses.is, however, assumes that predicative non-naming uses are subject to the same problems. My claim is that they are not. First, regarding competence, in order to understand (or somehow infer) that the name 'Einstein' in (36) can mean 'intellectual genius', it is not sucient that one is competent with the referential counterpart of 'Einstein'. Aer all, one may even be competent with using the name 'Einstein' to refer to Albert Einstein and not have the slightest idea that he is world famous for his intellect. So, simply understanding the meaning of 'Einstein' as used referentially is not enough to then infer that the name is (sometimes) used to mean 'intellectual genius' when used predicatively. With less conventional predicates, this gets evenmore obvious. If you overhear someone saying 'I consider myself a Carrie more than a Samantha', then merely being competent with referential uses of 'Carrie' and 'Samantha' is clearly not going to suce for you to understand (or infer) what the speaker said.23 is sharply contrasts the cases where a name N is used to mean 'individual called N'. In such cases it seems that mere competence with the referential use of the name is generally sucient for grasping or inferring the predicative use. In my view, this suggests that there is a relation in meaning between the referential use of a name and its predicative naming counterpart. And this relation could, as the variabilist would have it, be a relation between a presupposition associated with the referential use and the meaning of the predicative use. Second, regarding language internal consistency, in English every name appears to have a predicative naming use, i.e. a use where it expresses something like 'individual called N '.is alone strongly suggests that there must be a generalized mechanism that facilitates the derivation of one from the other. Notice, also, that it is quite dicult to imagine that a referential name N* could be introduced into English without then subsequently permitting the derivation of a corresponding predicative naming use, i.e. a predicative use where it would mean 'individual called N*'. By contrast, it is not the case that every name in English can immediately be used to predicate a non-naming property and, comparatively, these uses are exceedingly rare. Consequently, there is no obvious reason to think that there is an important relation in meaning between the referential use of a name N and a predicative non-naming use of N. Nor is there any good reason to think that there is a generalized mechanism 23 Onmost occasions, you would instead need to be fairly familiar with the TV show 'Sex in the City'. 21 that allows the derivation of one from the other.24 Finally, I argued earlier that the inferences in (29) and (30) are indexically valid and that this cannot be explained if one assumes that names are type-ambiguous while also accepting a standard millian analysis of referential names. However, a referee for this journal noted that a similar type of inference could be argued to hold between referential uses and non-naming uses of names, e.g. characteristic property uses. If this is correct, it would be a problem for both millianism and variabilism. e referee provided an example similar to (39). (39) ere are no Einsteins [intellectual geniuses] in attendance. Hence, Albert Einstein is not in attendance. However, the worry with this inference is that it is not indexically valid. To see why, simply imagine a context where a speaker truly asserts both 'ere are no Einsteins [intellectual geniuses] in attendance' and 'Albert Einstein is in attendance'. Such a context is clearly possible. It is a context where Albert Einstein is not an intellectual genius.ere is nothing inherently inconsistent about such a context. By contrast, a context where someone truly asserts both 'ere are no Einsteins [individuals called Einstein] in attendance' and 'Albert Einstein is in attendance' does seem inconsistent. It is not possible for there to be no individuals called Einstein in attendance if the speaker, in that context, can truly assert 'Albert Einstein is in attendance'.is, I think, again highlights an important dierence between predicative naming uses of names and predicative non-naming uses of names.e former, but not the latter, has an important relation in meaning to referential uses of names that must be captured semantically.25 Here is another way of illustrating this point.26 Consider the sentence in (40). (40) Einstein is not an Einstein. If the predicate in (40) is interpreted as meaning 'individual called Einstein', the sentence seems somehow anomalous. In particular, it appears that a speaker cannot 24 at is, it may be a case of ambiguity that is not a problem for either millianism or variabilism. However, this is of course not to suggest that it is a complete coincidence that the name 'Einstein' is used to mean 'intellectual genius' rather than, say, the name 'Jones' or 'Smith'.is obviously has something to do with Albert Einstein. All I am arguing here is that there are no obvious reasons to think that the characteristic property use of 'Einstein' is somehow morphologically zero-derived from the referential expression 'Einstein'. 25 is leaves the question why (39) arguably seems like a good inference? My guess is that it is because the argument is very subtly enthymematic. It has a suppressed premise, namely that Albert Einstein is an intellectual genius, but this premise is already common ground. 26 anks to Brian Rabern, p.c.] for suggesting this way of illustrating the problem. 22 assert this sentence without making some a linguistic mistake: If Einstein is not called Einstein, then it should not be possible to refer to Einstein using that name. But if it is possible, then the sentence is trivially false. By contrast, if the predicate is interpreted as a characteristic property (e.g. 'an intellectual genius') or group membership (e.g. 'a member of the Einstein dynasty') or a product (e.g. 'a replica of a painting by Einstein'), then the sentence is perfectly acceptable. In short, the predicative non-naming uses of names are quite dierent from the predicative naming uses. It thus seems very plausible that non-naming uses are just unproblematic cases of an ambiguity. Variabilism and Bound Names As regards bound uses of names, variabilism has an immediate and obvious advantage over millianism. If one assumes that names are pronouns, then it should come as no surprise that names have bound uses as this is a hallmark of pronominal expressions. Specically, if names are formally analyzed as variables, then one should expect names to be sensitive to operators whose explicit function is to shi variable assignments (e.g. nominal quantiers). Since names do have bound uses (as demonstrated in previous sections), any view that makes this prediction has a ceteris paribus advantage over views that predict that bound uses should not be possible. However, one potential problem for variabilism is the relative infrequency of bound uses. If names are pronouns, one might expect names to have bound interpretations in more or less the same cases as pronouns as long as the requisite conditions for licensing binding are in place. In binding theory it is standardly assumed that a pronoun and its antecedent must be co-indexed and that the antecedent must c-command the pronoun in order to bind it. Moreover, the grammatical features of the pronoun must match the features of its antecedent-this is typically referred to as feature matching. Consider the example below. (41) [Every person called Del Naja]1 thinks he1/2 is a genius. 27 e sentence in (41) has two possible interpretations.e DP 'every person called Del Naja' c-commands the pronoun 'he' and the features of the pronoun (singular, 3rd person, masculine) match the features of the DP, so when the pronoun is used anaphorically (represented by co-indexing), this yields a bound interpretation of the pronoun. However, if we substitute the name 'Del Naja' for the relevant pronoun, 27 In Government and Binding theory, cf. Chomsky (1981), the standard explanation for the lack of a bound reading in (41) is that it is a violation of Principle B, but if variabilism is correct, names should most likely not be classied as R-expressions and would therefore not be subject to Principle B. 23 we then retain both the structural relation between the name and the DP as well as the feature matching. So, we should expect there to be a bound interpretation of the name in (42) as well. (42) [Every person called Del Naja]1 thinks Del Naja1?/2 is a genius. e problem, of course, is that there does not seem to be a natural bound interpretation of the name in (42).is now raises a question for the variabilist, namely what explains this prima facie surprising result. If names are bindable variables, then why is there no bound interpretation of a name even when its features match with a co-indexed DP that c-commands it? Although this may seem problematic for the variabilist, there is a compelling psycholinguistic explanation of this apparent discrepancy. Terms such as pronouns, demonstratives, names, and denite descriptions can all be used to refer to the same things.ey can also all be used anaphorically. But, as noted by Gundel et al. (1993), these expressions appear to be governed by a so-called giveness hierachy.at is, depending on the cognitive status of their intended referent or their intended anaphoric anchor, dierent expressions are generally preferred. Simplifying somewhat, Gundel et al. (1993) observes that when the intended referent or the intended anaphoric anchor is activated, for example when it can be retrieved from the immediate linguistic environment, the use of a pronoun is strongly preferred over uses of both names and descriptions. So, even though a speaker can express the same content using (43)–(45), for most speakers there is a clear preference for (43) over both (44) and (45). (43) Otto1 loves his1 mother. (44) ? Otto1 loves Otto's1 mother. (45) ? Otto1 loves [the mother of Otto]1. e same pattern can be observed in cases not involving possessives. (46) Otto1 thinks that he1 is a genius. (47) ? Otto1 thinks that Otto1 is a genius. (48) ?/# Otto1 thinks that [the person called Otto]1 is a genius. Given this observation, it is hardly surprising that occurrences of bound names are fairly rare, because whenever an expression is bound, there will always be a retrievable antecedent, namely a binder, from the immediate linguistic context. Consider again (42). If the speaker intended a bound interpretation of the name, i.e. an interpretation where the second occurrence of 'Del Naja' is co-indexed with the antecedent DP, then the speaker could have used a pronoun and given that pronouns are generally preferred in cases where the intended antecedent is activated, the fact that the speaker 24 did not use a pronoun will suggest that the speaker is not intending an anaphoric interpretation. In other words, because the speaker did not use a pronoun, the sentence is more naturally processed as expressing a non-bound (i.e. not co-indexed) interpretation of the name and this explains why the bound interpretation of the sentence is so dicult to access. Finally, notice that the observation here is completely general. In cases where a bound interpretation of a name should in principle be available, the name is almost always in competition with a pronoun that would yield the same interpretation. As a result, using a name rather than a pronoun will almost always result in a non-anaphoric, and hence unbound, interpretation of the name. So, this observation explains not only the lack of a bound interpretation of the name in (42), but also the lack of bound interpretations in a wide variety of other cases, for example cases which might have been thought ought to be paradigmatic examples of bound names, e.g. (49) and (50). (49) ? One woman called Louise1 loves Louise's1 mother. (50) ? Every woman called Louise1 loves Louise's1 mother. If the explanation above is correct, i.e. if names are consistently in competition with pronouns and pronouns are generally preferred over names with respect to bound interpretations, this then raises a dierent question, namely why would a bound interpretation of a name ever be licensed? Here it is important to emphasize that the observations made by Gundel et al. (1993) concern processing preferences. While the givenness hierarchy is a descriptive generalization, the general hypothesis that is supposed to explain this generalization is that while descriptively impoverished expressions require a high degree of cognitive activation, they are preferred because they are easier to process. So, when an intended referent is highly activated, for example by being retrievable from the immediate linguistic environment, a pronoun is preferred over names and descriptions because they place less cognitive demands on processing. Given this, one might think that a bound use of a name could be licensed in cases where using a pronoun would be more demanding with respect to processing than using a name despite the referent being activated. One salient candidate for a case of this kind is the example due to Elbourne (2005)- repeated below. (22) Every woman who has a husband called John and a lover called Gerontius takes only Gerontius to the Rare Names Convention. In this case, if the pronoun 'he' had been used instead of the name 'Gerontius', the pronoun would have two potential antecedents, namely 'a husband called John' and 'a lover called Gerontius'. In other words, the sentence would be ambiguous between two possible interpretations, cf. below. 25 (51) Everywomanwhohas [a husband called John]1 and [a lover calledGerontius]2 takes only him1?/2?/3 to the Rare Names Convention. Since there is no information available in the immediate linguistic environment as regards which antecedent is intended, processing the sentence becomes dicult. By contrast, using a name instead of a pronoun serves as a disambiguation and therefore simplies the processing of the sentence. Consequently, the use of a name here, even for the bound reading, is licensed. Another example from Elbourne (2005) supports this explanation: (52) If John insists on calling his next sonGerontius, then his wife will be annoyed and Gerontius will get made fun of because of his name. (Elbourne, 2005) Again, if the second occurrence of 'Gerontius' is replaced by a pronoun, there is more than one possible anaphoric resolution, and even though the speaker might be able to disambiguate based on simple world knowledge, the complexity of the processing of the sentence is plausibly increased. So, again, using a name is preferred. e explanation above not only explains why bound uses of names are generally infrequent, but it also explains why in at least some cases bound uses of names are licensed. While it is not clear that this explanation will work for every occurrence of a bound name, e.g. the example in (21) from Geurts, I think this suces to show that variabilism has a signicant advantage with respect to bound uses of names over e.g. millianism. ere may further psycholinguistic or generally pragmatic observations that will explain why a bound reading of the name in (21) is licensed, but I will not explore these here. Instead I will now turn to another potential problem for the variabilist view.28 28 A referee for this journal suggested the example in (R1) and reported a judgment that the reading where 'Jane' is bound is as natural as the reading where 'she' is bound in (R2). (R1) Every man who knows [a woman called Jane]i thinks Janei is genius. (R2) Every man who knows [a woman called Jane]i thinks shei is genius. However, I must confess that I disagree with this judgment. To me, (R1) is slightly awkward and (R2) seems clearly more natural than (R1).at said, I do think the referee is correct that the sentence in (R1) is less awkward than e.g. (42) and I grant that this cannot be immediately explained by my proposal above about bound names serving to disambiguate. So, at present, I simply do not have a good explanation of this observation. I am inclined to think that this just shows that the explanation I have provided above is not exhaustive. I think I am right that many bound interpretations of names are licensed precisely because they serve a disambiguating purpose, but likely there are other cases in which bound interpretations of names are licensed for another reason. It remains to be seen what these reasons might be. 26 An attentive reader might have noticed that both Geurts' and Elbourne's cases of bound names are donkey cases. A donkey case is a sentence where an expression, typically a pronoun, is bound, but where the standard structural constraints that are assumed to govern binding are violated. In short, in a standard donkey case, the bound expression is not c-commanded by its antecedent.is could be a potential embarrassment to the variabilist who may have thought that simply analyzing names as variables would immediately solve the problem of bound interpretations of names. However, since the most prominent examples (and possibly the only examples) of bound names are donkey cases, an explanation of these cases relying on the standard account of variable binding is not going to work. One natural response here is to argue that the problems raised by donkey cases show that the orthodox view of variable binding must be reconsidered. Indeed, there are other independent reasons for drawing this conclusion since cross-sententially bound pronouns (and names) also cannot be captured on the standard view. In other words, there are independent reasons for thinking that some kind of dynamic binding theory explicitly designed to handle donkey anaphora and cross-sentential binding, e.g. Discourse Representation eory (Kamp and Reyle, 1993; Kamp et al., 2011), File Change Semantics (Heim, 1982), or Dynamic Predicate Logic (Groenendijk and Stokhof, 1991), is needed regardless. And once dynamic binding theory is adopted, capturing donkey type cases involving names is not a problem. However, it is important to emphasize that even if a dynamic theory is adopted, it is key to capturing bound uses of names that these are analyzed as variables, i.e. pronouns. If names are analyzed as constants, which eectively is the millian view, then adopting a dynamic binding theory will do nothing with respect to capturing bound uses of names. At this stage, I suspect that proponents of descriptivismmight be keen to emphasize that the observation that the cases above are donkey cases appears to count in favor of their view. Aer all, descriptivists analyze names as descriptions and one fairly standard approach to donkey pronouns is to treat these as covert denite descriptions.29 However, it is important to note that descriptivism faces the same problem as variabilism when it comes to capturing the lack of bound readings of names and occurrences of cross-sententially bound names. To my knowledge, simply adopting a descriptivist analysis of pronouns is not going to help solve those problems. 29 See e.g. Evans (1977, 1980), Cooper (1979), Heim (1990). 27 Shied Names and Shied Pronouns In the section on shied uses of names, I argued that bare epistemic modals can give rise to failures of rigidity and consequently that these types of cases pose a signicant problem for millianism. Yet, I suspect that some milliansmight respond that this criticism is misguided since it was never assumed that names are rigid in epistemic contexts. I would emphasize that there need be no contradiction in maintaining that names aremodally rigid, and satisfy a substitutivity principle for modal contexts, while denying the substitutivity principle for belief contexts.e entire apparatus elaborated in 'Naming and Necessity' of the distinction between epistemic and metaphysical necessity, and of giving a meaning and xing a reference, was meant to show, among other things, that a Millian substitutivity doctrine for modal contexts can be maintained even if such a doctrine for epistemic contexts is rejected. 'Naming and Necessity' never asserted a substitutivity principle for epistemic contexts. (Kripke, 1979, fn.10, my emphasis). However, even if we grant this, it remains unclear how millianism is supposed to handle shied uses of names, for example cases such as (26), since capturing the truth conditions of such sentences intuitively requires the reference of a name to shi from its actual reference. But if the meaning of the name is exhausted by its (actual) reference, then this simply should not be possible. So, even if it is maintained that rigid designation is a principle restricted to non-epistemic contexts, it is not obvious that this solves the problem for millianism. at names are rigid is a consequence of the semantic analysis of names as constants, and so if epistemic modals are quantiers over possible worlds, it remains unclear how to make the right predictions in such cases. By contrast, shied uses of names in epistemic contexts is not a problem for descriptivism since, as mentioned above, one of the main benets of a descriptivist analysis is that co-extensional names need not be co-intensional. So, what happens if names are analyzed as variables instead of constants as the variabilist would have it? Presumably not very much, because if the reference of a term is determined entirely by the variable assignment, it then follows that the term is rigid, cf. rigid designation above. In other words, if names are analyzed as variables, they remain immune to shiing by modals. So, it might seem that variabilism is in the same boat as millianism with respect to shied uses. However, there is an elegant and theoretically fruitful way for the variabilist to address this problem that is not available to the millian. To see this, let's start by considering another important similarity between names and pronouns, namely that names and pronouns have the same kind of modal prole. Like names, pronouns are also unshiable by metaphysical modals. To demonstrate, consider (53). 28 (53) He might not have been Del Naja. If the demonstrative reference of 'he' is Del Naja, then on a metaphysical interpretation of the modal, this sentence is intuitively false. is is analogous to the case where the name 'Del Naja' is substituted for the pronoun. But, like names, pronouns can be shied by epistemicmodals. For example, assume that the speaker has reasons to believe that Del Naja is the individual responsible for Banksy's work and that while pointing to Del Naja the speaker asserts (54). (54) He might be Banksy. Given that it is consistent with the speaker's information state that Del Naja is the individual responsible for Banksy's work, the speaker's assertion of (54) seems clearly true. Moreover, this is not limited to 3rd person pronouns. Even the 1st person singular pronoun-one of the so-called pure indexicals, cf. Kaplan (1989)-can be shied in this way. Just imagine that Del Naja wakes up in a hospital bed with severe amnesia and that he is given a copy of an article detailing all the evidence that he is Banksy. Since Del Naja is aware that he is suering from severe amnesia and thus may have completely forgotten what he has been doing for the past couple of years, it seems that he may truthfully assert (55). (55) I might be Banksy. In short, it seems that we face the same problem with pronouns that we face with names, namely accounting for their shiy behavior in epistemic modal contexts but non-shiy behavior in non-epistemic modal contexts. Given this similarity between names and pronouns, it seems natural to suppose that the explanation of this behavior must be uniform. Yet, if names and pronouns are analyzed as fundamentally dierent expressions, i.e. as constants and variables, then it is dicult to imagine that there could be such a uniform explanation. e issue of shied uses of pronouns (focusing specically on indexicals) is addressed in detail by Santorio (2012). Santorio argues that in order to account for shied uses of indexicals, we should think of epistemic modals not simply as operators whose function is to shi the world-parameter, but rather as operators whose function is to shi both the world-parameter and the assignment-parameter. On the standard view, informational modals are, in essence, quantiers over possible worlds. On the view I'm advocating, they also encode in their meaning an apparatus that locates real-world individuals within the set of worlds quantied over. us on the new picture these modals manipulate a greater amount of information.e classical picture had them quantify over a set of 29 worlds connected to the actual world via an accessibility relation; on the new picture, they quantify in addition over counterparts of actual individuals in each of the worlds in the set. (Santorio, 2012, 15) e general idea behind Santorio's proposal can, I think, be summed up in the following way: A variable assignment is a mapping from variables to individuals that is determined by the context and it is generally assumed to be a representation of the referential relations that obtain given a certain set of features of the context where these features are to some extent independent of the speaker. By contrast, epistemic modals (or informationalmodals) are expressions whose meaning depends on a body of information, for example the presuppositions of one or more agents- typically including the speaker. It thus seems plausible that when an expression whose semantic value is determined by a variable assignment (which is a representation of the operative referential relations given a certain context) is embedded in the scope of an epistemic modal, i.e. a modal that is sensitive to a restricted and contextually determined body of information presupposed by one or more agents, the relevant assignments are shied to reect this body of information, i.e. to reect what the agents in question, given their information state, construe as the relevant referential relations. Or in other words, to reect how the agents in question are thinking of certain objects and individuals.e function of an epistemic modal is therefore not merely to quantify over a set of possible worlds compatible with the epistemic state of some agent(s), but in addition to align the representation of the relevant referential relations with the information presupposed by the agent(s) in question.is seems quite plausible especially when considered in relation to cases where speakers are considering possible identities. What identities are taken to be possible is clearly relative to the information that is presupposed by the relevant agents and the way in which the agents are thinking of the objects in question. Santorio therefore assumes that one function of an epistemic modal is to determine a range of epistemic counterparts: [...] a relation of counterparthood is simply a relation of similarity (see Lewis (1968) and (1983)): x is a counterpart of y under a certain respect just in case x and y are suciently similar in that respect. More specically, epistemic counterparthood is a three-place relation of similarity (x is an epistemic counterpart of y for a subject S) which captures a way a subject thinks of a certain object. y, z, . . . are epistemic counterparts of x for S just in case (a) S has beliefs about x and (b) y, z, . . . possess all the properties that S attributes to x. Epistemic counterparts are generally used, within possible worlds theories of mental content, to 'locate' actual world individuals within belief worlds of subjects. (Santorio, 2012, 13) 30 So, in the context where Del Naja wakes up in a hospital bed with severe amnesia, Del Naja has limited knowledge about himself. Maybe Del Naja knows that his name is 'Del Naja', that he is a member of Massive Attack, etc.ese are properties that he attributes to himself. In this context, an epistemic counterpart for Del Naja will be any individual that also has those properties. For this reason, it is compatible with Del Naja's information state that there is a counterpart who has all these properties, but in addition also has the property of being called Banksy, having constructed the Baloon Girl painting, etc. In short, there is a counterpart of Del Naja that is Banksy. With respect to semantics, Santorio therefore assumes that in addition to determining an assignment function g, i.e. a function from variables x1, x2, ... xn to individuals, the context c also determines a sequence of counterpart functions F = ⟨f 1, f 2, ... f n⟩. Formally a counterpart function is an individual concept, i.e. a function from worlds to individuals, and for each variable x1, x2, ... xn, there is therefore a corresponding counterpart function that maps g(x1), g(x2), ... g(xn) to its epistemic counterpart at various other worlds. What epistemic relation is represented by the sequence of counterpart functions depends on the context, namely the information state of the subject and the way in which the subject is thinking of the relevant object.e semantics for epistemic 'might' and 'must' is then stated as follows: (56) JmightKc,g,w = λp. for some ⟨g′,w′⟩ accessible from ⟨g,w⟩, JpKc,g ′,w′ = 1 (57) JmustKc,g,w = λp. for every ⟨g′,w′⟩ accessible from ⟨g,w⟩, JpKc,g ′,w′ = 1 As regards accessibility, a pair ⟨g′,w′⟩ will be accessible from ⟨g,w⟩ if and only if: i. w′ is consistent with the speaker's information state at w. ii. f 1(w) = g(1) ∧ f 2(w) = g(2) ∧ f 3(w) = g(3), and so on. iii. g′ = {⟨1, f 1(w ′)⟩, ⟨2, f 2(w ′)⟩, ... ⟨n, f n(w ′)⟩} Given this semantics, a sentence such as (55) is predicted to be true relative to a context c, an assignment g, and a worldw as long as there is a possible worldw′ (that is consistent with Del Naja's information state at w) where a counterpart of Del Naja is such that he is the individual responsible for Banksy's work. And, as mentioned above, in the context of Del Naja suering from amnesia, there is a possible world consistent with Del Naja's information state where his counterpart is the artist Banksy. Hence, the sentence is true. e purpose of this somewhat cursory explication of Santorio's proposal is not to argue that this is clearly the best explanation of shied uses of pronouns. Indeed, there are several alternatives to Santorio's proposal. For example, Cumming (2008) has defended a variabilist analysis of names on the grounds that this can solve certain 31 puzzles concerning shied uses of names in belief attributions when combined with an analysis of belief verbs where these are treated as quantiers over both possible worlds and assignments. Cumming's analysis does not explicitly involve counterparts, but it does rely fundamentally on the assumption that epistemic verbs, e.g. belief verbs, are assignment shiers. More recently, Ninan (2012, 2013) has defended a slightly more sophisticated version of a counterpart semantics (but otherwise similar to Santorio's) that is intended to deal with a more general puzzle concerning epistemic modals and various referential terms.30 In other words, the view that epistemic modals manipulate the assignment function in addition to manipulating the worldparameter is becoming increasingly common.31 Now, as should be obvious, if names are analyzed as variables, then an analysis of epistemic modals where these are treated as assignment shiers will also work for shied names.32 For example, in the context of (26), there is a possible world consistent with the speaker's epistemic state where a counterpart of Del Naja is the individual responsible for the murals and installations generally attributed to Banksy, i.e. there is a possible world where Del Naja is the artist Banksy. In other words, by analyzing names as variables, the variabilist can not only account for both shied uses of names and pronouns, but do this in a completely uniform way. 30 For a discussion of the dierences between these views, see Rabern (2018). 31 According to the widely accepted analysis of modals due to Kratzer (1977, 1981), modals are contextsensitive quantiers over possible worlds and the role of the context is to determine a relevant domain of quantication. For example, if the sentence 'must φ' is used to make a nomological claim, the context determines a set of possible worlds that are consistent with the natural laws and this is the domain of quantication for the modal. By contrast, if that sentence is used to make a claim about metaphysical necessities, the context then determines a set of metaphysically possible worlds instead. Since modals such as 'must', 'may', 'might', etc. can be used to make a multitude of dierent kinds of modal claims in both English and a wide variety of other languages, an analysis that treats these expressions in a uniform way seems highly preferable to a simple ambiguity view. However, by assuming that 'must' and 'might' do not function as universal and existential quantiers over possible worlds when used epistemically, but rather as universal and existential quantiers over assignment-world pairs, this seems to suggest that 'must' and 'might' are lexically ambiguous. However, we are not forced to accept this conclusion. Instead, one could assume that allmodals are (context-sensitive) quantiers over assignment-world pairs, but that when a modal is used to make a non-epistemic claim, the relevant assignments remain constant. is amounts to assuming that when a modal is used to make a non-epistemic claim, the relevant counterpart relation is always identity.is, I think, would make perfect sense. 32 Indeed, the main motivation for Cumming's proposed semantics of epistemic verbs (where these are treated as assignment shiers) is to account for cases of shied names. Moreover, while the primary focus of Santorio's paper is shied indexicals, Santorio does point out that his semantics would work equally well for cases involving shied names, cf. (Santorio, 2012, 27-29). I have no particular preference with respect to Cumming's, Santorio's or Ninan's proposals, and simply used Santorio's proposal for the purposes of illustrating the general idea. 32 By contrast, a semantics for epistemic modals along the lines of Cumming, Santorio, or Ninan cannot be used by the millian to account for shied uses of names since according to millianism, names are not expressions whose semantic value is determined by a variable assignment. Consequently, any operator whose function is to manipulate the assignment function is by denition incapable of shiing the reference of such an expression. Moreover, notice that while variabilism has the resources to deal with shied uses of names, it does this without the result that names now violate rigid designation. In the context of ametaphysicalmodal, i.e. an expression that only manipulates the world parameter, the reference of any name (and any pronoun) will remain constant across every possible world. In short, a variabilist analysis of names provides exactly what we need. A way of capturing why names have shied uses in epistemic contexts, but no shied uses in non-epistemic contexts. By comparison, millianism has no obvious and certainly no straightforward way of capturing shied uses of names in epistemic contexts. As for descriptivism, the problem is the prediction that names are shiable in e.g. metaphysical contexts. However, a referee for this journal suggested that there is a potential solution for descriptivist views that take names to denote individual concepts (so, not predicativism butmost other descriptivist views). As the referee put it, a descriptivist could hold that names denote individual concepts that are rigid across metaphysical possibilities, but non-rigid across epistemic possibilities. e immediate worry with this suggestion is that it is not clear that it makes sense to simply hold ormaintain that individual concepts have these properties. Aer all, individual concepts are functions, so in order to count as rigid with respect to some modal space, it will have to behave in a very specic way. In particular, it will have to output the same individual across every world in the relevant modal space. But the output of an individual concept is determined by properties of the input world, namely what individual falls under the relevant concept at the input world. So to ensure that such a function is rigid across metaphysical possibilities, one would have to assume that the same individual falls under the concept at every metaphysically possible world in the domain of the function. However, there is no plausible reason to assume this. For example, with respect to names N , dierent individuals can clearly fall under the concept 'the unique individual called N' at various metaphysically possible worlds. Consequently, it seems that in order for this idea to work, one would have to simply stipulate a specic domain for certain individual concepts, but this is clearly not explanatory.33 33 I wonder if what the referee really had in mind here was embracing a two-dimensional semantics along the lines of Chalmers (2011). I think this is a more promising idea, but it comes with various non-trivial commitments. First, in a two-dimensional semantics, expressions are assumed to have two 33 Variabilism and Frege's Puzzle Now, admittedly there may be potential problems or objections to the type of analysis of epistemicmodals and epistemic verbs discussed above. But if we tentatively assume that this general idea could work then, as Cumming (2008) notes, this also promises a general solution to Frege's puzzle-specically the problem with explaining how sentences such as (4) and (5) can have dierent truth conditions. (4) Goldie believes that Del Naja1 is Del Naja1. (5) Goldie believes that Del Naja1 is Banksy2. If epistemic modals are assignment shiers given that they are expressions whose meaning depends on a body of information, it seems quite natural to think that epistemic verbs more generally, e.g. belief-verbs, are also assignment shiers. Assuming that true belief requires that truth at every assignment-world pair compatible with the subject's information state, then by using the semantic resources sketched in the previous section, it is easy to account for the truth conditional dierence between (4) and (5).e sentence in (4) is trivially true since relative to every assignment-world pair ⟨g′,w′⟩ compatible with Goldie's information state: f 1(w ′) = f 1(w ′). By contrast, the sentence in (5) is not trivially true, since it need not be the case that relative to every assignment-world pair ⟨g′,w′⟩ compatible with Goldie's information state: f 1(w ′) = f 2(w ′). As Cumming (2008) notes, the more general point is that in order to eectively intensions, namely so-called primary and secondary intensions. Extensions are therefore relativized to pairs of possible worlds ⟨v,w⟩, where v represents the epistemic dimension of meaning and w represents themetaphysical dimension ofmeaning. Second, in this framework, epistemic andmetaphysical modals are assumed to shi dierent semantic parameters. Epistemic modals shi v, i.e. the domain of primary intensions, whereas metaphysical modals shi w, i.e. the domain of secondary intensions. Because epistemic and metaphysical dimensions of meaning are relegated to two distinct semantic parameters, it is fairly simple to ensure rigidity across a single dimension without rigidity across the other. For example, with regards to names, we could state the lexical entry as follows: JNK = [λv. [λw . ιx.is-calledN(x) in v]].e reference of this name depends on the extension of ιx.is-called-N(x) at v. Since this parameter is shiable only by epistemic modals/verbs, the name will refer to the same individual across every metaphysical possibility, i.e. it will be rigid across metaphysical possibilities. By contrast, it will not be rigid across epistemic possibilities since it might refer to dierent individuals across dierent epistemic possibilities. In some ways, this two-dimensionalist strategy and the variabilist strategy are quite similar. On both views, epistemically shied uses are captured in terms of a semantic parameter separate from the parameter used to capture metaphysical modality. is is not the place for a serious discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of two-dimensional semantics, but this view would clearly struggle with explaining a variety of the data points described earlier in this paper, e.g. various predicative uses of names, but also the relation between names and pronouns. Two-dimensional semantics has also been argued to have other diculties, e.g. the nesting problem, see Soames (2005), Dever (2007), Forbes (2011). But see also Chalmers and Rabern (2014). 34 solve the problems that arise with names in modal environments, we need a certain level of variability in somemodal environments in order to capture the right truth conditions but no variability in other modal environments. e millian analysis provides no variability at all, so this renders it impossible to explain epistemically shied interpretations of names. With a descriptivist analysis, we get variability in allmodal context, but this leads to incorrect predictions with respect to metaphysical modals. What variabilism provides is the intermediate option: A way of securing rigidity (invariability with respect to possible worlds), but variability with respect to assignments. Moreover, this analysis of names parallels the analysis of pronouns in general and given the similarity in their modal proles, this seems very desirable. Finally, the analysis of names (and pronouns) does not parallel the analysis of definite descriptions which given the dissimilarity in the modal prole of names and descriptions again also seems highly desirable. Conclusion e general aim of this paper was to provide a short overview of the comprehensive explanatory potential of variabilism. I have argued that this analysis provides a simple and elegant explanation of predicative, bound, and shied uses of names. In addition, I have shown that variabilism, alongsidemillianism, retains the desirable prediction that names are rigid which remains a signicant problem for descriptivist theories.34 Finally, variabilism also provides a potential solution to Frege's puzzle along the lines proposed by Cumming (2008) which is still one of the main problems facing millianism. Given the nature of this paper, I have kept my discussions of the data reasonably short. However, the issues under discussion are both nuanced and complex, so entire papers could have been devoted each. In other words, I do not pretend that this paper closes the book on the semantics of names and I happily concede that more needs to be said.ere are also additional uses of names that I have not discussed in this paper, e.g. uses of names as verbs and deferred referential uses.35 Since these uses have not been discussed much elsewhere, I have no reason to think that variabilism is in a worse position than millianism or descriptivism as regards accounting for these uses, but I acknowledge that this remains an open question. 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