Development Of Theories Of Reference

Since the end of the nineteenth century, philosophers’attention to language became a powerful Ideological trend, the linguistic turn is the revolution in the field of philosophy in the 20th century, and the most important problem of philosophy of language is about meaning and reference. Thus referential theory became the one of the most important filed in western academy. The problem of relationship between word’s meaning and its reference have been a focus which was argued in the field of philosophy.The thought of Russell is the inheritance and development of the thought of Ferge, Russell use the analyze method of mathematical logic to language analysis, and raised description function, translated the subject of usual language into the predicate, by this way, Russell solved three problems in the history of philosophy, that is the paradox of being、the invalidation of law of excluded middle and the invalidation of the law of identity. Especially his theory of definite description, which is called a "model of philosophy ". Unlike Ferge, Russell thought that the meaning of nouns is its reference, and he didn’t distinguish insignificance and false, he thought that insignificance is equal to false, which was criticized by Strawson. Russell’s referential theory was built on the basis of semantics, so he didn’t consider the application of language, however, the contribution of Russell is known all over the world.Strawson was an English philosopher, he researched description on the aspect of ordinary language. He based his theory on the actual usage, which is a new horizon of research of referential theory. He said that language is different of usage of it, which is neglected by the Russell, so that Russell’s theory have some fundamental false.Donnellan’s referential theory is the inheritage and development of the theories of Russell and Strawson, and he researched the language in the new angle of pragmatics. Base on the work of Strawson, Donnellan further stressed the role of context, applied the attributive use and referential use to analyze the description, and criticized that Russell didn’t aware the reference use of description, he also criticized that Strawson didn’t aware the attributive use, by these ways, he enriched the content of description theory.The author suggest that the development of referential theory based on these three people’s theories, the evolve of referential theory and their thoughts are inseparable. We can find the norm of the development of the referential theory from the researching them. Referential theory is a theory of language, whose development was connected with language. Because language is practical, referential theory is more and more practical. The trend is irreversible, which is decided by the characteristic of language.