Abstract
Szabó (2000) follows Heim (1982,1983) in viewing familiarity, rather thanuniqueness, as the essence of the definitearticle, but attempts to derive bothfamiliarity and uniqueness implicationspragmatically, assigning a single semanticinterpretation to both the definite andindefinite articles. I argue that if there isno semantic (conventional) distinction betweenthe articles, then there is no way to derivethese differences between them pragmatically.
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Abbott, B. A Reply to Szabó’s “Descriptions and Uniqueness”. Philosophical Studies 113, 223–231 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024063903859
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024063903859