A Dual-Layer Semantics for Definite Descriptions

Since the publication of (Frege 1892), (Russell 1905) and (Strawson 1950), the semantics of definite descriptions has been one of the most extensively debated topics within the philosophy of language. And even though the majority of current theorists are Russellians of one flavour or another, Frege’s and Strawson’s approach to definite descriptions has undergone a veritable renaissance in the recent literature. In this paper I argue that important insights of both camps can be combined in a unified account of the semantics of definite descriptions. To this end, I briefly lay out the debate between Russellians and Fregeans in Section 1, and explicate, in Section 2, the notion of what I call an ‘intuitive sentence presupposition’ and its relations to more received conceptions of semantic presupposition. In Section 3 I then employ this notion in developing a two-dimensional lexicon entry for the definite article—an approach that is largely inspired by Karttunen and Peters’ (1979) treatment of conventional implicatures. Once the formal semantics for ‘the’ is in place, I investigate some interesting implications of the emerging view and respond to objections. Section 4 finally sums up the discussion and concludes that dual-layer accounts—even though out of fashion for more than 30 years by now—are not only surprisingly simple, but also extraordinarily powerful: they can combine the advantages of both Russellian and Fregean theories while avoiding their respective disadvantages.