The Relationship Between Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference

The Relationship Between Speaker’s Reference andSemantic Reference

David Lumsden*Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Waikato

Abstract

The distinction between speaker’s and semantic reference arose in connection with Donnellan’sdistinction between the referential use and the attributive use of definite descriptions. The centralissue concerning the referential ⁄ attributive distinction is whether it is semantic or pragmatic.Kripke favours the pragmatic interpretation and developed the terminology of speaker’s andsemantic reference in his explanation. The notion of speaker’s reference can apply also to uses ofproper names, demonstratives, indefinite descriptions and quantifier expressions. The main dangerfor the speaker’s reference ⁄ semantic reference distinction lies in controversy over the seman-tics ⁄ pragmatics interface. Both Relevance Theory and neo-Gricean theory acknowledge thephenomenon of pragmatic intrusion into semantics. If the pragmatic intrusion involves objectivecontext rather than speaker’s intentions this may permit a distinction between speaker’s andsemantic reference.

1. Introduction

It is natural to make a distinction between speaker’s reference, which concerns a speakeron a particular occasion intending to refer to a particular individual, and semantic refer-ence, which concerns how linguistic conventions governing an expression contribute todetermining a particular individual on that occasion. The next section contains someexamples showing that the speaker’s referent may not always coincide with the semanticreferent. This discussion is restricted to singular reference, where the referent is an indi-vidual rather than a property or kind. It indicates how the distinction arose in the philo-sophical literature and investigates different viewpoints concerning reference in semanticsand pragmatics. The distinction is of interest within linguistic pragmatics as it representsone significant area in which semantics engages with pragmatics, in ways that remaincontroversial.

2. Some Examples

Suppose I see someone working in the distance and, intending to make a comment abouthim, say, ‘The man raking leaves is working hard’. While a salient man is indeed workinghard, he is not raking leaves but aerating the soil. Plausibly, I say something true of thatman. It could be that there is someone in the vicinity, partly obscured by a tree, who isindeed raking leaves but in a leisurely fashion. The terminology of speaker’s and semanticreference allows us to say that the speaker’s referent of that utterance of ‘the man rakingleaves’ is the man who is in fact aerating the soil, while the semantic referent of theutterance of the phrase is the man behind the tree.

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Kripke (1972 ⁄ 1980: 25, footnote 3), who introduced this terminology, applies thedistinction to names also. Two men, seeing someone at a distance, converse like this:‘What is Jones doing?’ ‘Raking leaves’. If the person they see and wish to speak about isnot in fact Jones but Smith, then we can say that the speaker’s referent is Smith whilethe semantic referent is Jones, the person for whom they mistook Smith. It may be possi-ble to extend the terminology to demonstratives. To modify an example from Kaplan(1978), a speaker points above his head to where a photograph of Noam Chomskynormally hangs and says, ‘That man uses his impressive intellect to defend a radical leftwing viewpoint’, not realizing that a practical joker had replaced that photograph withone of George W. Bush. We could say that the speaker’s referent of ‘that man’ is NoamChomsky, while the semantic referent is George W. Bush. As there is only one picturein the direction of the pointing finger and only one person portrayed in it, the demon-stration does appear to specify a unique individual, though Kaplan also draws our atten-tion to cases where the demonstration is intuitively vague so that the speaker’s intentionneeds to be taken into account to arrive at a unique referent. In the theory of demonstra-tive reference, it is controversial whether the speaker’s intention can be determinative, orpartly determinative, of semantic reference (Reimer 1992). The same issue arises for defi-nite descriptions.

Just focussing on these examples may make the distinction appear innocuous but itrelates to subtle issues concerning the semantics ⁄pragmatics interface, that is, the theoreti-cal line between semantic rules and the pragmatic principles they interact with to producean interpretation of an utterance.

3. The Referential ⁄ Attributive Distinction

Reference looms large in the 20th century philosophical literature, notably in the workof Russell and Strawson, which will be discussed in the next section. The immediatesetting for the speaker’s reference ⁄ semantic reference distinction, though, is Donnellan(1966). He argues that definite descriptions have two functions or uses. There is theattributive use in which a speaker ‘states something about whoever or whatever is theso-and-so’. There is also the referential use in which a speaker ‘uses the description toenable his audience to pick out whom or what he is talking about and states somethingabout that person or thing’ (Donnellan 1966: 285). He emphasizes that the samedescription appearing in the same sentence can be used referentially on one occasion andattributively on another. A speaker uttering, ‘Smith’s murderer is insane,’ on the occasionof Jones’ trial for Smith’s murder could use the description either referentially or attribu-tively (using the standard form for definite descriptions, the subject expression would be‘the murderer of Smith’, but the difference is not significant).

Where the description ‘Smith’s murderer’ is used attributively, the speaker is claiminginsanity about whoever murdered Smith. Where the description is used referentially, thespeaker is attributing insanity to Jones. One way of emphasizing the difference is toconsider the situation in which Jones is innocent, and someone else is guilty. In that case,the referential use still picks out Jones while the attributive use picks out someone else,the true murderer. The attributive use is likely to occur if the speaker’s evidence is thebrutal nature of the murder, while the referential use might occur if the evidence isJones’ strange behaviour. Not all commentators are prepared to allow for a referential usewhere the description is inaccurate or ‘improper’ (Mackay 1968; Reimer 1998; Recanati1993). A way of expressing the distinction between referential and attributive uses ofdefinite descriptions – one that can avoid mention of inaccurate descriptions – is to say

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that with a referential use the utterance expresses an object dependent proposition. Thismeans that mention of the object is essential to specifying the proposition (Neale 1990:19) or, in a stronger form, the object itself is part of the proposition expressed (Kaplan1978). While the description is functioning as a tool to assist in the identification of anobject, it does not, in itself, enter in to the proposition. Where the sentence in questionhas the form ‘The F is G’, this gives us a singular proposition consisting of an object and aproperty. In contrast, with the attributive use, it is the description that is essential to thespecification of the proposition expressed, and thus we have an object independentproposition.

If we restrict our attention to definite descriptions, the difference between objectdependent propositions and object independent propositions does appear central to thereferential ⁄ attributive distinction but not so if we also include names and demonstratives.In Kripke’s (1972 ⁄1980) view of names, ‘Smith is raking leaves’ expresses a singular prop-osition whether we consider the speaker’s or semantic referent of that utterance of‘Smith’, and the same holds for demonstratives, if we follow Kaplan (1989). The differ-ence is between two object-dependent propositions in those cases, so we need to attendto the possibility of inaccuracy to mark out referential uses.

4. Russell and Strawson

The standard account of the attributive use of definite descriptions is Russell’s (1905)extraordinarily influential theory of descriptions. Russell’s theory takes an Englishsentence of the form: ‘The F is G’, such as ‘The King is brave’, and captures it in alogical form that diverges from the subject–predicate structure apparent in the Englishgrammar, and has this structure: ‘There is one and only one king and he is brave’. Anobvious problem is that clearly there is more than one king in the world. We shall seesome ways to approach this issue in Section 7. We could say that the analysis is designedto precisely show that sentences with the surface form of ‘The F is G’ do not expressobject dependent propositions. Russell’s theory allows ‘The present King of France isbald’ to express a coherent proposition, even when there is no King of France, but aproposition that is false, as it contains the claim that there is a present King of France.

Russell’s theory of descriptions is criticized by Strawson (1950). He says speakers ratherthan expressions refer, but is prepared to allow that we can speak of the reference of ause of an expression, in a range of situations in which it would have a stable significance(p. 326). Thus, ‘the present King of France’ would have a consistent use during the reignof one French King. Russell’s approach by way of constructing logical forms might leadus to think that he considers reference as well as meaning to be properties of expressiontypes and sentence types. An alternative interpretation of Russell is that he is concerned toaddress the structure of propositions expressed by utterances of sentences of certain kindsand thus need not assume that expressions in themselves refer (Neale 1990: 25). Rama-chandran (1996) describes this kind of view as ‘token-Russellian’, which means that everyutterance of these sentences expresses a Russellian proposition.

Strawson claims a modern day utterance of, ‘The present King of France is bald’, lacksa truth value, given the failure of the presupposition that there is a present King ofFrance, and thus denies Russell’s claim that it is false. The dispute between Russell andStrawson provides the backdrop for Donnellan’s distinction between the attributive andreferential uses of definite descriptions. Russell’s theory of descriptions provides a plausi-ble account of the attributive use, while Strawson’s account is suggestive of the referentialuse. Donnellan criticizes both for failing to make the distinction between the two uses.

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5. The Nature of the Distinction: Kripke’s View

A dominant point of discussion following Donnellan (1966) concerns the nature of thedistinction. Donnellan himself seems to waver. He introduces his distinction as one oftwo functions or uses of definite descriptions but suggests in one place (p. 297) that defi-nite descriptions are neither syntactically ambiguous nor semantically ambiguous, butmight be pragmatically ambiguous. Kripke’s interpretation of the general thrust ofDonnellan’s article is that there is a semantic ambiguity. If he were not claiming there isa semantic ambiguity, then it is hard to see that he has an objection to Russell’s theory,which provides a logical form and thus an account of the semantic meaning of definitedescription sentences.

Kripke presents the distinction between semantic reference and speaker’s reference as aspecial case of Grice’s (1957) distinction between sentence meaning and speaker’s mean-ing. Even more pertinently, we can understand the semantic referent to contribute towhat is said, while the speaker’s referent relates to what is conversationally implicated (Grice1967 ⁄1989). Both notions are highly theory bound. What is conversationally implicatedconcerns what the speaker intends to communicate that goes beyond what is said, in away that depends on certain general features of discourse. Grice’s account depends on hiswell-known cooperative principle, which is developed using various maxims under thefamiliar headings of quantity, quality, relation and manner (Grice 1967 ⁄1989). Theassumption that the speaker is acting cooperatively in the conversation so as to providethe right quantity of information, which is relevant and so on, allows the hearer to workout the speaker’s intended message.

Kripke’s conclusion is that Donnellan’s arguments do not provide a refutation ofRussell’s theory and he articulates a pragmatic interpretation of the phenomenon thatDonnellan describes. Kripke (1977 ⁄1979: 264) expresses the referential ⁄ attributivedistinction using the terminology of speaker’s and semantic reference. He thinks there aretwo kinds of intention underlying speakers’ employment of singular terms: the semanticreferent is given by a general intention to use the designator with a consistent signifi-cance, while the speaker’s referent is given by a specific intention at that particularmoment to refer to something.

Usually, a speaker will think their general intention and their specific intentionconverge on the same object but this comes about in one of two ways. In the attributiveuse, the speaker’s specific intention is simply to follow the general intention, which willreflect the standard significance of the terms used and structures employed. In this ‘simplecase’, as Kripke calls it, the speaker’s referent is guaranteed to be the semantic referent,and there is no room for an implicature to involve a different individual. In contrast, thereferential use is one where the speaker’s specific intention is not anchored to the generalintention but represents the communicative intention to speak of someone, who can beidentified in an independent way. Here, there is room for an implicature to relate to adifferent individual from the one that is part of what is said. Even so, in the typical case,the speaker will believe that the speaker’s referent is, as a matter of fact, the semanticreferent, though that belief could turn out to be false. In Donnellan’s case discussed abovein which the speaker uses ‘Smith’s murderer’ referentially, the defendant may be innocentof the murder, even though the speaker takes him to be guilty. Kripke calls this ‘thecomplex case’. Kripke’s view makes the referential ⁄ attributive distinction a pragmaticone, as the distinction between the two kinds of case concerns the nature of the speaker’scommunicative intentions.



Kripke (1977 ⁄ 1979) says Donnellan has not shown the distinction is semantic. Heinvites us to consider a possible language in which Russell’s theory is known to provide acorrect account of definite descriptions and to consider if the phenomenon Donnellandescribes would still occur in the use of such a language. What Kripke calls ‘the weakRussell language’ is one which is just like English except that the truth conditions forsentences containing definite descriptions are stipulated to be as Russell specifies. Kripkeargues that Donnellan’s phenomenon can still occur in such a language, for someonecould still wish to make a remark about some particular person and use a description theytook to be accurate to indicate the intended person. Even if the description were in factinaccurate, they could still be understood to be making a remark about that person. Ifthat can occur with the use of a Russell language, then the evidence of Donnellan’sphenomenon in our use of English does not show that Russell’s theory provides anincorrect account of English.

Devitt (2004: 287) and Ramachandran (1996) argue that users of such a languagewould normally employ other referential devices when wanting to express a singularproposition. Devitt and Ramachandran’s position appears to rely on the questionableassumption that we mostly use language explicitly rather than indirectly. Devitt alsodescribes what he calls ‘Donnellan English’, similar to what Kripke calls ‘the ambiguousD-language’, in which it is stipulated that our familiar English definite descriptions areambiguous between referential and attributive senses. Devitt’s view is that the behaviourof speakers of that language would be indistinguishable from speakers of English. Thatmay be so, but Kripke himself allows that both hypotheses, that English is the weakRussell language and that it is the ambiguous D-language, have some plausibility. Thispart of the argument is just designed to show that Donnellan’s argument is inconclusiveand does not in itself refute Russell. Kripke’s tentative positive argument for the prag-matic hypothesis is that it allows us to keep the semantics simple, in line with one ofGrice’s main motivations in developing his theory of implicature. Here, we have lingeredon Kripke’s development of the pragmatic hypothesis but there are other versions andelaborations (Searle 1979; Bertolet 1980; Bach 1981; Lumsden 1984).

Here, we have seen how the concepts of speaker’s and semantic reference fit well, inKripke’s hands, with a pragmatic interpretation of the referential ⁄ attributive distinction.Supporters of a semantic ambiguity hypothesis would need to say that with each ‘use’there is a corresponding semantic referent.

6. Demonstratives

One way of understanding the referential uses of definite descriptions is to see them asakin to demonstratives (Kaplan 1978, 1989; Wettstein 1981). For one thing, simplesentences with a demonstrative in subject position can be understood as expressing singu-lar propositions, as propositions based on referential uses of definite descriptions arethought to. Secondly, the identification of the referent depends on the context in animmediate way both for demonstratives and for referential uses of descriptions. In the caseof pure indexicals such as ‘I’, the linguistic meaning will specify a referent in a particularcontext of utterance. In Kaplan’s (1989: 521) terminology, that meaning is the characterand the referent is the content. That content can then be considered in different circum-stances of evaluation: other worlds and times. In the case of a demonstrative, such as‘this’, what is needed is a demonstration such as a pointing. A demonstration similarly hasa character, which specifies a content, an individual, in a particular context of utterance.Kaplan’s (1989: 527) view about the referential uses of descriptions is that they can

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function as a demonstration. Once an individual has been specified in a context, we can‘kick away the character’ and consider the individual to be what contributes to the deter-mination of the proposition.

The picture of Chomsky example in Section 2 illustrates the idea that the referen-tial ⁄ attributive distinction applies to demonstratives. Following the referential option, wecould say that the explanation of the referential uses of demonstratives and of definitedescriptions is the same. In each case, the speaker’s intentions need to be shown to linkup with the world in ways that are independent of the linguistic expression used. Follow-ing the attributive option, the objective character of the demonstration could become themodel for the referential use of definite descriptions. The problem with this is that theobjective character of the description itself gives us the attributive not the referential use.

Drawing a comparison between the referential uses of definite descriptions and demon-stratives may provide some insight but it does not in itself settle whether the referen-tial ⁄ attributive distinction has a semantic or a pragmatic character.

7. Incomplete Definite Descriptions

Strawson (1950) points out that utterances of sentences such as ‘The table is covered withbooks’, can be used effectively even though there is no implication that there is a uniquetable, as Russell’s analysis requires. There is a unique table about which the speakerwishes to make a remark, however. Such incomplete definite descriptions can appear togive comfort to approaches to reference that emphasize the speaker’s communicativeintentions. Even Kripke (1977 ⁄1979: 255) suggests that considerations concerning incom-plete definite descriptions may yet provide problems for Russell’s view.

Russell is not without resources to handle incomplete definite descriptions, though.The incomplete description could be understood as elliptical for a unique description.Alternatively, the context could be taken to supply a restricted domain of discourse inwhich the description does refer uniquely. Neale (1990: 95) describes these approaches as‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ respectively. Incomplete definite descriptions appear in bothreferential and attributive uses. In an utterance of ‘The murderer is insane’, the description‘the murderer’ need not be understood referentially, for it could be taken to concernwhoever is the murderer of Smith (Bach 1981). Therefore, those who support a semanticambiguity in definite descriptions would also need to employ Russell type strategies tohandle those cases. But they would want to say that there are some uses, the referentialuses, in which that explanation is not appropriate, and the referent needs to be determinedas the individual about whom the speaker wishes to speak. Those who favour a pragmaticexplanation of the distinction have the option of explaining a referential use by sayingthat, while the proposition specified by the Russellian analysis of the sentence is clearlyfalse (as there is more than one murderer), there can be a proposition communicatedthat is true, one involving the speaker’s referent. See Lepore (2004) for a comprehensivelist of both semantic explanations of incomplete descriptions and pragmatic explanations.

While there is considerable theoretical interest in incomplete definite descriptions, theydo not appear to provide a conclusive argument for a semantic ambiguity interpretationof Donnellan’s distinction.

8. The Systematic Nature of the Distinction

Reimer (1992), Devitt (2004) and Ramachandran (1996) in different ways allow that apragmatic explanation would be adequate for occasional or isolated referential uses of



definite descriptions, but claim it fails to capture the systematic way in which definitedescriptions can be employed either referentially or attributively. Grice’s notion ofconversational implicature can cover systematic phenomena, though, for he considersgeneralized as well as particularized forms of conversational implicature. Levinson (2000)in particular has developed the category of generalized conversational implicature (GCI)as a kind of default reading of a sentence. A GCI is one that goes beyond the conven-tional meaning of the sentence but does not depend on any particular conversationalsetting for the interpretation to be triggered (although a particular setting could cancelthat default interpretation). One kind of example of a GCI, suggested by Grice(1967 ⁄ 1989: 37), is this:

John is meeting a woman this evening.+> John is meeting a woman other than his mother ⁄ wife ⁄ girlfriend ⁄ sister.

Bontly (2005) argues that the existence of GCIs means that implicatures do not have tobe ‘one off’ and so can accommodate the referential use as a broad pattern. That there isa relatively even-handed option between referential and attributive means that thisphenomenon is unlike GCIs, however. A GCI can be cancelled by words or context,such as by adding ‘in fact his mother’ to the sentence above. This does not appear to bepossible in the choice between referential and attributive, because neither option is thedefault. It is true that further phrasing could settle the interpretation. In the ‘Smith’smurderer’ example adding the phrases: ‘the chap over there’ or ‘and I mean whoever didit’ would settle the interpretation as referential or attributive respectively. That there areGCIs shows that conversational implicatures need not be one-off, but we shouldacknowledge that the referential ⁄ attributive distinction does not fit the pattern of GCIs.

Feit (2003) also rejects the argument that the standard or frequent employment ofdefinite descriptions in a referential use shows that there is a semantic ambiguity betweenreferential and attributive uses of definite descriptions. He points to cases where standarduse does not intuitively lead to a distinct semantic meaning. For example, someone whoutters:

The director of The Philadelphia Story won an Oscar.

would typically be understod to mean that he won the Oscar for that movie, and similarlyin many other contexts. Even so, it is not plausible that there is a semantic meaning thatcaptures such a dependence interpretation. Indeed, true to the pattern of conversationalimplicatures, that interpretation is cancellable by adding the phrase, ‘but not for thatmovie’.

9. Anaphora, Indefinites and Quantifiers

Donnellan (1978) argues that the way that a pronoun can be used anaphorically to pickup a previous speaker’s reference supports the view that speaker’s reference has relevanceto semantics. Smith says to his wife, ‘The fat old humbug we saw yesterday has just beenmade a full professor’, and his wife understands whom he means even if the description isinaccurate, and can use ‘he’ anaphorically to indicate that speaker’s referent (Geach1962 ⁄1980: 31). Kripke (1977 ⁄1979): 270, and note 32) does not see the force of thatargument, as he thinks that a pronoun can refer to something salient in a variety of ways.Donnellan (1978: 57) follows Chastain (1975) in noting the way that indefinite descrip-tions can be the antecedents of anaphora as in:

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A man came into the office today. He tried to sell me an encyclopedia.

The indefinite description introduces a new individual into the conversation. Donnellanargues that the individual enters into the truth conditions of the utterance, so that theproposition expressed is object dependent.

If we do not regard the indefinite description in this kind of example as a referringexpression, as Chastain (1975: 206) does, we can take the Russellian route of expressingit using an existential quantifier, $x (Man x …), and include the second sentence withinits scope, so that ‘he’ is encoded as a bound variable ‘x’. If we follow Russell’s Theory ofDefinite Descriptions and adopt a pragmatic explanation of the referential ⁄ attributivedistinction then similar reasoning suggests there can be a referential use of indefinitedescriptions, pragmatically explained. Indeed Kripke (1977): 266) suggests that is the case.Similar remarks apply to sentences containing quantifier expressions explicitly, such as,‘There is someone at the other side of the room drinking champagne whom I wouldvery much like to meet’. The person who fits the description, or merely appears to inthe case of a soda water drinker, can be a speaker’s referent. Kripke allows this as anextension to his notion of speaker’s reference. This would not commit us to there beinga semantic referent, even though Russell (1905) does allow that an individual who fitsthe description can be described as the denotation.

We have seen that the notion of a speaker’s referent potentially has broad application,covering not only definite descriptions but also names, demonstratives, indefinite descrip-tions and quantifiers. The broad application of the notion of speaker’s reference tends toundermine the claim that there is semantic ambiguity in definite descriptions.

10. Pragmatic Intrusion

Donnellan’s distinction between referential and attributive uses has typically been under-stood in terms of a standard Gricean model of the semantics ⁄pragmatics interface.A hearer’s grasp of what is said provides input to a processing module that calculatesimplicatures (Levinson 2000: 171). What is said is determined by linguistic meaning plusthe determination of the referents, the time of utterance and a resolution of any ambigu-ous words or phrases. If we consider that pragmatic processes come into play in fixingthe referent of an imperfect definite description, for example, and take what is said to beon the semantic side of the semantic ⁄pragmatic divide then we already have pragmaticsintruding into semantics. If I say, ‘The door is open’, I may in a certain context implicatethat the door needs closing. But prior to the calculation of the implicature, the hearerneeds to ascertain the referent of ‘the door’ and this arguably is a pragmatic matter. Ifpragmatics intrudes into semantics by way of the speaker’s referent determining thesemantic referent, the value of the distinction is threatened.

Since Grice, interest in pragmatic intrusion has developed and is not confined to refer-ence. Relevance theorists observe that inferential processes are required to specify acontent, labelled an ‘explicature’, that forms the basis on which implicatures are calculated(Sperber and Wilson 1986; Carston 1988). When Mary says to Peter, ‘It will get cold’, ina certain context, the explicature could be that the dinner will get cold while the impli-cature is that she wants him to come to eat dinner at once. Explicatures are considered tobe developments of the logical form encoded in the utterance, while the implicatures arenot tied to logical form. Grice’s notion of what is said is sidelined. Further developmentsin relevance theory, such as in lexical pragmatics, have continued to undermine a tradi-tional division between semantics and pragmatics (Carston and Powell 2006).



Neo-Griceans, such as Levinson (2000), also believe in pragmatic intrusion into seman-tics. Levinson (2000: 186) speaks of ‘Grice’s circle’ by which he means that implicaturedepends on what is said but to determine what is said requires various operations includ-ing disambiguation and fixing of reference that require a process apparently like implicat-ure. Levinson discusses a range of strategies for avoiding the circle and does not himselffavour the relevance theory approach, holding that there is no principled differencebetween the processes that yield explicatures and those that yield implicatures. Anotherapproach is that of Bach (1994), who employs a relatively narrow conception of what issaid into which there is no pragmatic intrusion, but introduces a notion of impliciture(with a third ‘i’), which completes an incomplete proposition or expands a minimal oneto capture the speaker’s intention. In contrast, Recanati (1989a) has a broader notion ofwhat is said, which is pragmatically enriched. Levinson (2000: 3.2.7.7) and Huang (2007:chapter 7) compare these approaches in detail.

Given the complexity of the semantics ⁄pragmatics interface we should not think thatthere is an uncontested notion of what is said that provides a clear framework for seman-tic reference and nor should we think the semantic and pragmatic interpretations of thereferential ⁄ attributive distinction are clear cut and provide the only options. The mostappropriate description of the referential ⁄ attributive phenomenon needs to be sensitive tobroader considerations. Recanati (1989b, 1993): chapter 15) opposes the view that theonly possible understandings of the referential ⁄ attributive distinction are that of a semanticambiguity and the kind of pragmatic explanation that captures the referential use as animplicature. He claims that the distinction is a form of ambiguity at the middle level ofthe propositions literally expressed by an utterance, which relates to the view of Neale(1990) and Ramachandran (1996) discussed in Section 3.

Pragmatic intrusion could depend on objective aspects of context and need not implythat speaker’s intentions determine semantic value. Indeed such a thing would challenge anatural assumption that semantic rules have the job of allowing speaker’s intentions to becommunicated and would be underperforming if they were themselves determined byspeaker’s intentions (Lumsden 1985, 1996). While that assumption is plausible for themost part, there are cases where speaker’s reference needs to determine semantic refer-ence, such as utterances containing, ‘the person I am thinking of’. This kind of case doesnot provide significant support for a semantic ambiguity interpretation of demonstrativephrases, though, for it is a case where the semantic reference is stipulated to be the speak-er’s reference (a reverse order from Kripke’s account of the attributive use), and there isno room for ambiguity. Where pragmatic intrusion depends on objective context we canstill hold out hope for some kind of a distinction between speaker’s and semantic refer-ence.

11. Conclusion

The terminology of speaker’s and semantic reference fits well with a pragmatic interpreta-tion of the referential ⁄ attributive distinction and the arguments for a semantic ambiguityappear inconclusive. One persuasive argument for a pragmatic interpretation concerns thenumber of constructions, aside from definite descriptions, to which the notion of speak-er’s reference applies: names, demonstratives, indefinite descriptions and quantifiers. Thecorresponding notion of semantic reference is vulnerable to changes in semantic andpragmatic theory, though, as work on pragmatic intrusion shows. Even so, provided thatthe pragmatic intrusion relates to objective context rather than the speaker’s intentions,there might still be room for a distinction between speaker’s and semantic reference.

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Short Biography

David Lumsden studied philosophy at the University of London and at PrincetonUniversity, where he received his PhD, following which he has spent his career in NewZealand. His interests are the Philosophy of Language and the Philosophy of Mind. Inthe Philosophy of Language he has written on the semantics ⁄pragmatics interface in thetheory of reference in Philosophia, Philosophical Studies and the Pacific PhilosophicalQuarterly, and elsewhere. He co-authored Natural Language and Computational Linguis-tics: An Introduction (Ellis-Horwood). His most recent article is ‘Kinds of conversationalcooperation’, Journal of Pragmatics, 2008.

Note

* Correspondence address: David Lumsden, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University ofWaikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected]

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The Relationship Between Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference