| In this dissertation I present a framework for thinking about why it is that the English demonstrative determiners (this, that, these, and those) can be used in variety of different ways, including, but not limited to, reference to entities in the immediate perceptual surroundings. Previous literature in philosophy has sought to exclude many other uses of demonstratives from the category of genuine demonstratives and instead has focussed exclusively on deictically used demonstratives. The philosophical tradition has, in a variety of ways, considered a speaker's use of a demonstrative expression to involve a perceptual connection with the referent. In order to show that perceptual acquaintance with the referent is not essential to demonstratives, I offer a survey of the different ways demonstratives are used and explain why we see these different uses by appealing to the notions of definiteness and specificity. I argue that demonstratives are species of definite expression, where definiteness requires that the entities under discussion can be individuated by both speaker and hearer. However, demonstratives are not definite in virtue of providing a descriptive, or quasi-descriptive, condition that uniquely identifies the one and only one thing satisfying the description. Rather, I argue that demonstratives are used to single out a referent in contrast to other potential referents. Further, I argue that demonstratives are specific, where specificity indicates that the value of a demonstrative is assigned to entities on the basis of a referential anchor -- be that entities present in the physical surroundings, evoked in previous discourse, or mutually known by speaker and hearer. This framework presents the essential feature of demonstrative expressions not as referring to individual entities in the immediate perceptual surroundings but as singling out particular entities that are to be kept track of in thought. The implications of adopting this framework are, first, that the multiplicity of different ways in which demonstrative expressions are used can be seen as, for the most part, a unified phenomenon, despite the philosophical tradition's exclusion of many uses; but also that demonstrative reference is not based upon a special cognitive relationship that the speaker has with the referent. |
