Witnesses

The meaning of definite descriptions is a central topic in philosophy and linguistics. Indefinites have been relatively neglected by philosophers, under the Russellian assumption that they are simply existential quantifiers. However, a robust set of patterns suggest that this assumption is wrong. In this paper I develop a new approach to (in)definites which aims to capture these patterns. On my theory, truth-conditions are classical. But in addition to truth-conditions, meanings comprise a second dimension, which I call bounds. It is at the level of bounds, not truth-conditions, that the characteristic coordination between indefinites and definites takes place. My system has a classical logic, thus avoiding serious problems which face the most plausible extant account of these patterns, namely, dynamic semantics. More generally, my approach yields a new perspective on the relation between truth-conditions and dynamic effects in natural language.