Daniel Rothschild, Russellian Descriptions and Negative Polarity Items. ms, Princeton.
I give an argument against the Russellian semantics for definite descriptions. It goes by arguing that Russellian definite descriptions are not compatible with an account of negative polarity items. Negative polarity items are lexical items including any and ever that can only appear in special semantic contexts. The Russellian semantics for definite descriptions should make it such that negative polarity items can appear within definite descriptions. However, they cannot. I discuss some accounts of negative polarity licensing and explain how they can easily be made compatible with a dynamic view of definite descriptions, but not a Russellian view.
[via Online Papers in Philosophy]
Mentions my analysis based on Strawson Entailment. At a first glance, I would have quite a bit to say about this paper. But that will have to wait for the new year, when I’m back at work. Stay tuned.
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This entry was posted by fintel on Monday, December 13th, 2004, at 6:13 pm.
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