Descriptions in Context

Know about the book -

Descriptions in Context is written by Cleo A. Condoravdi and published by Routledge. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1315521881 (ISBN 10) and 9781315521886 (ISBN 13).

First published in 1997, this book focuses on the semantics of definite and indefinite descriptions — taking the presuppositional theory of definiteness and indefiniteness proposed by Heim as a starting point. It seeks to show that there exists a special type of indefinites that have an interpretation commonly associated with definites. It further argues that the felicity conditions associated with indefinite NP’s can vary and develops a more fine-grained theory of novelty within the framework of File Change Semantics. More generally, this work can be seen as providing an empirical argument in favour of a dynamic theory of meaning and against the more traditional truth-conditional theory.