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Reference, Binding, and Presupposition: Three Perspectives on the Semantics of Proper Names

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Abstract

Linguistics and philosophy have provided distinct views on the nature of reference to individuals in language. In philosophy, in particular in the tradition of direct reference, the distinction is between reference and description. In linguistics, in particular in the tradition of generative grammar, the distinction is between pronouns and R-expressions. I argue for a third conception, grounded in dynamic semantics, in which the main watershed is between definites, which trigger presuppositions that want to be bound, and indefinites, which set up new discourse referents. On this view, proper names, indexicals, and definite descriptions are all analyzed as presupposition triggers.

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Notes

  1. Cf. Kaplan’s (1989) claim that I am here now or I am speaking are contingent but knowable a priori (where a priori is formally defined as true in every utterance context).

  2. For third person pronouns this is commonly called the pronoun’s demonstrative usage.

  3. This treatment is for instance found in the influential textbook of Heim and Kratzer (1998). Note that linguists often talk about indices (\(i, j\)) rather than variables (\(x,y\)).

  4. If we interpret undefinedness as a third truth value, this amounts to assuming a Weak Kleene logic for undefinedness, i.e. undefinedness always projects.

  5. It is tempting to describe the undefinedness above as presupposition failure. Indeed, the current treatment of pronominal features coincides with some early accounts of presupposition projection (cf. Strawson 1950, or even Frege 1892). As we’ll see below, presupposition is actually a more complex phenomenon, so I refrain from using the term presupposition for the simple inheritance of undefinedness that is assumed to capture the behavior of pronominal features in the tradition of semantics in generative grammar.

  6. Unless, that is, we’d be willing to accept blatantly non-compositional measures, such as re-opening brackets at sentence boundaries, or interpreting some occurrences of the overt existential a donkey as universal quantification.

  7. So-called Bishop sentences (If a bishop meets a bishop, he blesses him) are decidedly harder to deal with in terms of E-type pronouns. Cf. Elbourne (2006) for an attempt.

  8. For a detailed overview of presupposition theories, including Van der Sandt’s, see Beaver and Geurts (2011).

  9. Abbott (2002) argues that many of Geurts’s arguments are unconvincing, and I agree on some counts. I disagree with Abbott on the importance of the non-global binding and accommodation examples, cf. Bambi (17a) and Aardvark (19) below. While she claims these are special cases in which apparent names have some kind of non-standard interpretation, I maintain that these examples provide support for a presuppositional account of proper names.

  10. It would be rather unnatural to italicize or otherwise quote the first occurrence of Prachinavarhi here, but, logically speaking, the name is mentioned rather than used.

  11. I’m paraphrasing the precise application of the test: Hey wait a minute! I didn’t know that there was someone (salient in the context) who is called Ted.

  12. See (Kaplan 1990:110) for an explicit defense of this consequence, or see Pelczar and Rainsbury (1998) for one of the proposals that treat names as indexicals to circumvent it.

  13. As a reviewer points out, this relevant body of information about the external speech situation is reminiscent of the notion of a discourse/utterance situation as used in Situation Semantics (Barwise and Perry 1983). In other words, we can think of Hunter’s hyperglobal DRS as a description of the discourse situation.

  14. Hunter (2013) provides a different, less traditional semantics, but the relevant results are the same.

  15. There is a lot of discussion about whether for instance intermediate accommodation can happen (or even makes sense conceptually). With respect to hyperglobal accommodation I’m inclined to say that accommodation is a speaker’s deliberate strategy, leading to new, truth-conditionally at issue information. Hence, accommodated material may end up at the global discourse level, but never in the hyperglobal level.

  16. Pronouns can however accommodate “partially.” For instance, you can use she to contribute the information that the intended referent is female in a context where this is not yet known. Cf. the hey wait a minute test: A: “She deserves a better grade.” B: “Hey wait a minute, I didn’t know that was a woman!”

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Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank the two anonymous referees for their commentaries. Further thanks to Dolf Rami and the participants of the conference The Game of the Name in Göttingen (September 2011). This research is supported by the the EU under FP7, ERC Starting Grant 263890-BLENDS (E. Maier).

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    Emar Maier

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Maier, E. Reference, Binding, and Presupposition: Three Perspectives on the Semantics of Proper Names. Erkenn 80 (Suppl 2), 313–333 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9702-1

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