Deferred Reference

In Deferred Reference, Jeffrey C. King examines how singular terms (e.g., a pronoun or name) may be used to call the audience's attention to one object in order to say something about another. The book argues that this phenomenon applies to context-sensitive non-referring terms as well.

''Deferred reference'' is the name given to the phenomenon whereby a speaker uses a singular term (for example, a pronoun or a name) to call the audience''s attention to one object in order to make some other object the semantic value in context of the singular term. This book argues that non-referring contextually sensitive expressions exhibit a phenomenon very similar to deferred reference. Having introduced deferred reference and offered criticisms of existing accounts, which restrict deferred reference to pronomial expressions only, Jeffrey C. King offers a positive account that encompasses from singular terms and definite descriptions, and goes on to argue that tense, adverbs, gradable adjectives, and possessives also give rise to a phenomenon very much like deferred reference. Deferred reference is therefore shown simply to be a special case of this more general phenomenon.