Referring as Requesting 
Philip R. Cohen 
Artificial Intelligence Center 
SRI International 
and 
Center for the Study of Language and Information 
Stanford University 
1. Introduction 1 
Searle \[14\] has arg,ed forcefully that referring is a speech act; 
that people refer, uot just expressions. This paper considers what 
kind of speech act referring might be. I propose a generalization of 
Searle's "propositional" act of referring that treats it as an illocution- 
ary act, a request, and argue that the propositional act of referring is 
unnecessary. 
The essence of the argument is as follows: First, I consider Searle's 
definition of the propositional act of referring {which I term the PAA, 
for Propositional Act Account). This definition is found inadequate 
to deal with various utterances in discourse used for the sole pur- 
pose of referring. Although the relevance of such utterances to the 
propositional act has been defined away by Searle, it is clear that any 
comprehensive account of referring should treat them. l develop an ac- 
count of their use in terms of a speaker's requesting the act of referent 
identification, which is to be understood in a perceptual sense. This 
itlocutionary act analysis (IAA) is shown to satisfy Searle's conditions 
for referring yet captures utterances that the PAA cannot. The con- 
verse positif)n is then examined: Can the IAA capture the same uses 
of referring expressions as the PAA? If one extends the perceptually- 
based notion of referent identification to include Searle's concept of 
identification, then by associating a complex propositional attitude 
to one use of the definite determiner, a request can be derived. The 
\]AA thus handles the referring use of definite noun phrases with in- 
dependently motivated rules. Referring becomes a kind of requesting. 
llence, the propositional act of referring is unnecessary. 
2. Referring as a propositional speech act 
Revising Austin's \[2\] Iocutionary/illocutionary dichotomy, Searle 
distinguishes between illoeutionary acts (IAs) and propositional acts 
(PAs) of referring and predicating. Both kinds of acts are performed 
in making an utterance, but propositional acts can only be performed 
in the course of performing some illocutionary act. 
Let us consider Searle's rules for referring, which I term the 
"propositional act analysis", or PAA. A speaker, S, "successfully and 
non-defectively performs the speech act of singular identifying refer- 
ence" in uttering a referring expression, R, in the presence of hearer, 
H, in a context, C, if and only if: 
1. Normal input and output conditions obtain. 
2. Tile utterance of R occurs as part of the utterance of 
some sentence (or similar stretch of discourse) T. 
3. The utterance of T is the (purported) performance 
of an illocutionary act. 
4. There exists some object X such that either R con- 
\]The research reported in this paper was supported initially by the Fairchild Cam- 
era and Instrument Corp. Its subsequent development has been made possible 
by a gift from the System Development Foundation. I have benefitted from many 
discussions with Itector Levesque and Ray Ferra.ult. 
rains an identifying description of X cr S is able to 
supplement R with an identifying description of X. 
5. S intends that the utterance of R will pick out or 
identify X to If. 
6. S intends that the utterance of R will ideatify X to tt 
by means of If's recognition of S's intention to iden- 
tify X and he intends this recognition to be achieved 
by means of It's knowledge of the rules governing R 
and his awareness of C. 
7. The semantical rules governing R are such that it is 
correctly uttered in T in C if and only if conditi~ms 
1-6 obtain." ( l\]4\], PP. 94-95.) 
Conditions 2 and 3 are justified as follows: 
Propositional acts cannot occur alone: that is oue can- 
not just \[emphasis in original -- PRC\] refer and pred- 
icate without making an assertifm or asking a question 
or performing some other illocutionary act ... One only 
refers as part of the performance of an illocutionary act, 
and the grammatical clothing of an iilocutionary act is 
the complete sentence. An utterance of a referring ex- 
pression only counts as referring if one says something. 
(Ibid, p. 25.) 
The essence of Conditions 4 and 5 is that the speaker needs to 
utter an "identifying description". For Searle, "i(lentification ~ means 
"... there should no longer be any doubt what exactly is being talked 
about". (lbid, p. 85.) Furthermore, not only should the description 
be an identifying one (one that would pick out an object), but the 
speaker should intend it to do so uniquely (Colidition 5). Moreover, 
the speaker's intention is supposed to be recognized by the hearer 
{Condition 6}. This latter Gricean \[7\] condition is needed to distin- 
guish having the hearer pick out an object by referring to it versus, 
for example, hitting him in the back with it. 
3. Problems for the Propo~itional Act Ac- 
count 
In a recent experiment \[3\], it was shown that in giving instructions 
over a telephone, speakers, but not users of keyboards, often made 
separate utterances for reference and for predication. Frequently° thes.e 
"referential utterances" took the form of existent ial sentences, such as 
"Now, there's a black O-ring". Occasionally, speakers used question 
noun phrases "OK, now, the smallest of the red pieces?" The data 
present two problems for the PAA. 
3.1. Referring as a Sentential Phenomenon 
Conditions 2 and 3 require the referring expression to be em- 
bedded in a sentence or "similar stretch of discourse" that predicates 
207 
something .f the refi, rent as part of the performance of some illocu- 
ti,nary act. llowever, it is ~bvious that speakers can refer by issuing 
isolated noun phra,:e or prepositional phrases. Since speakers per- 
formed illoculi,mary acts iu making these utterances, then, according 
to Conditi.ns 2 and 3, tl'ere should be an act of predication, either 
in the sentence .r the "similar stretch of discourse". For example, 
consider the f.l!,wing dial,,gue fragment: 
1. "Now, the small blue cap we talked about before?" 
'2. "l~'h-h u h", 
3. "Put that over the hole Oil the side of thai tube ..." 
The illocutlonary art performed by uttering phrase (it is finished 
and responded to in phrase (2} before the illocutionary act performed 
in phrase (3) containing the predication "put" is performed. The ap- 
peal to a sentence or stretch of discourse in which to find the illocu- 
tiouary act containing tile propositional act in (1) is therefore is un- 
convincing. The cause of this inadequacy is that, according to Searle, 
to perform an ill.eutionary act, an act of predicating is required, and 
the predicate must be uttered (Ibid, pp. 1k26.-127~. llence, there is no 
appeal to context to supply t,bvious predications. Likewise, there is 
no room for context to supply an obvi~ms focus of attention. Unfortu- 
nately, we can easily imagiue cases in which an object is mutually, but 
nonlinguistically, bcused upon {e.g., when Ilolmes, having come upon 
a body on the ground, listens for a heartbeat, and says to Watson: 
"Dead"). In snch a case, we need only l)redicate. Thus, the require- 
ment that the act of reference b~" j~,intly located with some predication 
in a sentence or ilh~cutiuuary act is t~o restrictive -- the 9oals involved 
with reference and predication can be satisfied separately and contex- 
tually. The point of this paper is to bring such goals to the fore. 
3.2. Referring without a Propositional Act 
Tile second pr(llqi'ni is that Inost of tile separate utterances issued 
to secure reference were declarative sentences whose logical form was 
3 z P(z). For example, "there is a little yellow piece of rubber", and 
"it's got a plug in it". However, Searle claims that these utterances 
contain no referring act. (lbid, p. 29.) flow then can speakers use 
them to refer? 
The answer inwdves an analysis of indirect speech acts. Although 
such declarative utterances can be issued just to be informative, they 
are also issued as requests that the hearer identify the referent. : The 
analysis of these utterances as requests depends on our positing an 
action of referent identification. 
4. Identification as a Requested Action 
In Searle's account, speakers identify referents for hearers. ! re- 
vise this notion slightly and treat identification as an act performed 
by the hearer 131 . I use the term "identify" in a very. narrow, though 
important and basi-, sense -- one that intimately involves perception. 
Thus, the analysis is not intended to be general; it applies only to 
the case when the referents are perceptually accessible to the hearer, 
and when the hearer is intended to use perceptual means to pick them 
out. For the time b~'iug. I am explicitly not concerned with a hearer's 
mentally "identifying" some entity satisfying a description, or discov- 
ering a coreferring descripticm. Th, perceptual use of "identification" 
would appear to be a ~pe('ial case of .%arb"s use of the term, and thus 
Searle's condition,s sh,.uhl apply to, it. 
Referent identifica~:ion in this perceptual sense requires an agent 
and a description. The essence of the act is that the agent pick out 
the thingorth!nffs satisfying the description. The agent need not 
'2The classification of these utterances as identification requests was done by two 
coders who were trained by the author, but who worked independently. The 
reliability of their ¢odings were high -- over 90 per cent for such existential 
~tatements. 
be the speaker of the description, and indeed, the description need 
not be communicated linguistically, or even conlmunicated at all. A 
crucial component of referent identification is the act of perceptually 
searching for something that satisfies the description. The description 
is decomposed by the agent into a plan of action for identifying the 
referent. The intended and expected physical, sensory, and cognitive 
actions may be signalled by tile speaker's choice of predicates. For 
example, a speaker uttering the phrase "the magnetic screwdriver", 
may intend for the hearer to place various screwdrivers against some 
piece of iron to determine which is magnetic. Speakers know that 
hearers map (at least some) predicates, onto actions that determine 
their extensions, and thus, using a model of the heater's capabilities 
and the causal connections among people, their senses, and physical 
objects, design their expression, D, so that hearers can successfully 
execute those actions in the context of the overall plan. 
Not only does a speaker plan for a hearer to identify the referent 
of a description, but he often indicates his intention that the hearer 
do so. According to Searle, one possible way to do this is to use a 
definite determiner. Of course, not all definite NP's are used to refer: 
for example, in the sentence "the last piece is the nozzle', the referent 
of the first NP is intended to be identified, whereas the referent of the 
second NP is not. The attributive use of definite noun phrases \[6\] is a 
case in which the speaker has no intention that the hearer identify a 
referent. Yet other nonanaphoric u~es of definite noun phrases include 
labeling an object, correcting a referential miscommunicatiou, having 
the hearer wait while the speaker identifies the referent, etc. '~ 
To respond appropriately, a hearer decide~ when identi\[icatiou is 
the act he is supposed to perform on a description, what part this act " 
will play in the speaker's and hearer's plan~, and how aud when to 
perform the act. If perceptually identifying a feb'rent L~ represented 
as an action in the speaker's plan, hearers can reas,,u ab<,ut it just as 
any other act. thereby allowing them to infer the speaker's iat;'ntions 
behind indirect identification re.quests. 
In snmmary, referent identification shall mean l.lie conducting =,f 
a perceptual search process for the referent <,f a description. Tile verb 
"pick out" should be taken as synonymous. 
The following is a sketchy definition of tlw ceil,rent identification 
action, in which the description is formed fr~mi "a/lh, • y such that 
D(y)". 4 
3 X \[PERCEPTUALLY- 
ACCESSIBLE(X. Agt) & 
D(X) & 
IDENTIFIADLE(Agt, D) 
D 
RESULT(Agt, 
IDENTIFY-REFERENT 
{Agt. D). 
IDENTIFIED- REF E I'HDNT 
(Agt. D. X)I 
The formula follows the usual axi,ml;ttizati,m of acti,)n~ in dy- 
namic logic: P D fAct\]Q; that is, if P, aft,'r d.iug Act. Q. \["..ll.,'*ing 
Moore's \[9\] possible worlds semantics for actbJn, tit," nv,,,lal operau,r 
RESULT is taken to be true of an agent, an acti.n, an,I a formula, 
iff in the world resulting from the agent's perf,~rmfltg that actitm, tl,e 
formula is true. s 
The antecedent includes three conditions. The first is a -per- 
3See also {15, IO\] for discu-:~ion of sl)~,akors' goal~ toward~ th,. irC~r i r,.,a'i,,n of 
descriptions. 
4Thls definition is not particularly ilhlullnating, t, ut it is ng!. ;lily ,:a'.:u,.r thza 
Searle's. The point of giving it is that if a definition can be given in this form 
(i.e., as an action characterizable in a dynamic logic), the illocuti~nary analysis 
applies. 
SActually, Moore characterizes R.ESULT as taking an event and a fornmla as 
arguments, and an agent's doing an action denotes an event. This di~ereace is 
not critical for what follows. 
208 
ceptual accessibility" condition to guarantee that the IDENTIFY- 
REFERENT action is applicable. This should guarantee that, for 
example, a speaker does not intend someone to pick out the referent of 
"3 ~, "democracy", or "the first man to land on Mars ~. The condition 
is satisfied in the experimental task since it rapidly becomes mutual 
knowledge that the task requires communication about the objects in 
front of the hearer. 
The second condition states that X fulfills the description D. 
Here, 1 am ignoring cases in which the description is not literally true 
of the intended referent, including metonymy, irony, and the like (but 
see \[12\]). Lastly, D should be a description that is identifiable to this 
particular Agt. It should use descriptors whose extension the agent 
already knows or can discover via action. I am assuming that we can 
know that a combination of descriptors is identifiable without having 
formed a plan for identifying the referent. 
To give a name to the state of knowledge we are in after 
having identified the referent of D, we will use {IDENTIFIED- 
REFERENT Agt D X). That is, Agt has identified the referent 
of D to be X. Of course, what has been notoriously difficult to specify 
is just what Agt has to know about X to say he has identified it as 
the reforent of D. At a minimum, the notion of identification needs to 
be made relative to a purpose, which, perhaps, could be derived from 
the bodily acti.ns that someone (in the context} is intended to per- 
form upon X. Clearly, "knowing who the D is" 18, 9\], is no substitute 
for having identified a referent. After having picked out the referent 
of a doseription D, we may still not not know who the D is. On the 
other hand, we may know who or what the description denotes, for 
example, hy knowing ~ome "standard name" for it, and yet be unable 
to use that kn.wledge to pick out the object. For example, if we ask 
"Which is tho Seattle train?" and receive the reply "It's train number 
11689", we may ~till not be able to pick out and board the train if its 
serial number is not plainly in view. 
Finally, athough not stated in this definition, the means by which 
the act is performed is some function mapping D to some procedure 
that, when executed by Agt, enables Agt to discover the X that is 
the referent of D. 
4.1. Requesting 
Con.~ider what it takes to make a request. Hector Levesque and I 
\[4, 5\] argu~, that requests and other illocutionary acts can be defined 
in terms of interacting plans -- i.e., as beliefs about the conversants' 
shared knowledge of the speaker's goals and the causal consequences 
of achieving those goals. In this formalism, illocutionacy acts are no 
longer conceptually primitive, but rather amount to theorems that can 
be proven about a state of affairs. The proof requires an axiomatiza- 
tion of agents' beliefs, expectations, goals, plans, actions, and a cur* 
relation of utterance mood with certain propositional attitudes. The 
important point here is that the definition of a request is not merely 
stipulated, but is derived from an independently motivated theory of 
action. Any act that brings about the right effects in the right way 
satisfies the request theorem. 
Briefly, a request is an action (or collection of actions) that makes 
it ( 1 ) shared knowledge that the speaker's goal is that the hearer thinks 
the speaker wants the hearer to adopt the goal of doing a particular 
act, thereby making it (2) shared knowledge between the speaker and 
hearer that the speaker wants the hearer to do that act. This inference 
requires an additional "gating" condition that it be shared knowledge 
that the speaker is both sincere and can perform the requested act 
(i.e., he knows how, and the preconditions of that act are true). 
The processing of an utterance is assumed to begin by applying 
the propositional attitude correlated with its mood to the proposi- 
tional content associated with its literal interpretation. Thus, corre- 
lated with imperatives and interrogatives is the attitude above {corre- 
spending to goal (I)): 6 
(MUTUAL-BELIEF Hearer Speaker 
(GOAL Speaker 
(BEL Hearer 
(GOAL Speaker 
(GOAL Hearer 
(DONE Hearer Act P)))))} . 
(DONE Hearer Act P) is true if Hearer has done act Act 
and has brought about P. For yes/no interrogatives, Act would be 
an INFORMIF \[11\]; for imperatives, it would be the act mentioned 
in the sentence. Declaratives would be correlated with a different 
propositional attitude. Beginning with the utterance-correlated atti- 
tudes, a derivation process that constitutes plan-recogniti.n reasoning 
determines what the speaker meant \[7\]. Thus, for example, what the 
speaker meant could be classified as a request if the derivation included 
making (2) true by making the above formula true. 
An act may simultaneousJy achieve the goals constituting more 
than one illocutionary act. This ability underlies the analysis of indi- 
rect speech acts. Formalisms have been developed \[5, 11\] that describe 
when we can conclude, from a speaker's wanting the hearer to want 
the precondition of some act to hold, (or wanting the hearer to be- 
lieve the precondition does hold), that the speaker wants the hearer 
to adopt the goal of performing the act. The conditi.ns licensing this 
inference are that it be mutually known that the act (or its effect) is 
an expected goal of the speaker, and that it be mutually known that: 
the hearer can perform the act. is cooperative, and does not want not 
to do it. 
Returning to the troublesome existential sentences, this pattern 
of reasoning, which I term the "illoculionary act analysis" {\[AAI, can 
be used to derive a request for reh'rent identification. The reasoning is 
similar to that needed to infer a request to open the door on hearing 
a speaker, with two arm-loads of groceries, say "the door i~ closed". 
The general form of this reasoning involves the a.~serti.n o! an action's 
precondition when the effect of the action is an expected goal of the 
speaker. In the case at hand, the speaker's existential assertion causes 
the hearer to believe the existential precondition of the referent iden- 
tification act, since speaker and hearer both think they are talking 
about objects in front of the h~'arer, and because the description is 
identifiable. Ilence, the hearer concludes he is intended to pick out its 
referent. The hearer may go on to infer that he is intended to perform 
other acts, such as to pick up the object. This inference process also 
indicates when the indirect request interpretation is not iutended, for 
example, if it is mutually known that the description is not identifi- 
able, or if it is mutually known that the hearer would not want to 
identify the referent. 
I argue that this kind of reasoning underlies the propositional act 
account. First, I show that Searle's conditions on referring are a special 
case of the conditions for requesting referent identification. Then, I 
show that if one extends the definition of IDENTIFY-REFERENT 
to cover Searle's more general concept of identificatiou, the IAA is 
applicable in the same circumstances a~s Searle's analysis. Because the 
IAA is independently motivated and covers more cases, it should be 
preferred. 
5. Accounting for Searle's Conditions on 
Referring 
Assume Searle's Condition 1, the "normal i/O conditions." For 
the reasons outlined above, do not assume Conditions 2 and 3. Now, 
clearly, a speaker's planning of a request that the hearer identify the 
referent of some description should comply with the rules for request- 
ing, namely: the speaker is trying to achieve one of the effects of the 
CThe justification for this formula can be found in \[5\]. 
209 
requested action (i.e., IDENTIFIED-REFERENT} by way of commu- 
nicating (in the (;ricean sense) his intent that the hearer perform the 
action, provided that it is shared knowledge that the hearer can do 
the acti.n. The last condition is true if it is shared knowledge that the 
the prec.ndili.n to the action hohts, which includes Seacle's existen- 
tial Condition 4. Scarle's Condition 5 states that the speaker intends 
to identify Ihe referent to the hearer. This condition is captured in 
the IAA by its bee.ruing umtual knowledge that the speaker intends 
to achieve the effect of the referent identification act, IDENTIFIED- 
IH'H"I';RENT. Finally, Searle's Gricean intent recognition Condition 
\[G) takes h-ld in the same way that it does for other illocutionary 
acts. namely in virtue of a "feature" of the utterance (e.g., utter- 
ance mood, or a definite determiner} that is correlated with a complex 
prop.sitional attitude. This attitude becomes the basis for subsequent 
reasoning about the speaker's plans. In summary, Searle's conditions 
can be acconnted for by simply positing an action that the speaker 
requests aml that the hearer reasons about and performs. 
So far, the IAA and PAA are complementary. They each account 
for different aspects of referring. The IAA characterizes utterances 
who~e sole p.rpose is to secure referent identification, and the PAA 
characterizes the use of referring phrases within an illocutionary act. 
I now precede to show how the IAA can subsume the PAA. 
Searle argues that tree use of the definite article in uttering an 
NP is to indicate the speaker's intention to refer uniquely. Moreover, 
from Condition 5, this intention is supposed to be recognized by the 
hearer. We can get this effect by correlating the following expression 
with the delinite determiner: 
A D \[(MUTUAL-BELIEF Hearer Speaker 
(GOAL Speaker 
(BEL Hearer 
3 ! X (GOAL Speaker 
(GOAL Hearer 
(DONE Hearer 
IDENTIFY-REFERENT 
(Hearer, D), 
IDENTIFIED-REFERENT 
(Hearer, D, X))))))\] 
Think -f tiffs expression as being a pragmatic "feature" of a syn- 
tactic constituent, as in current linguistic formalisms. When this ex- 
pression is applied to a descriptor (supplied from the semantics of the 
NP} we have a complete formula that becomes the seed for deriving 
a request. Namely, if it is mutually believed the speaker is sincere, 7 
then it is mutually believed there is a unique object that speaker wants 
the hearer to want to pick out. If it is mutually believed the hearer 
can do it {i.e.. the prec~mditions to the referent identification act hold, 
and the hearer kn.ws how to do it by decomposing the description 
into a plan c~f action), it is mutually believed of some object that the 
speaker's goal is that the hearer actually pick it out. llence, a request. 
* Thus. for the perceptual ease, the IAA subsumes the PAA. 
5.1. Extending the Analysis 
Assume that instead of just considering the act of identification 
in its perceptual sense, we adopt Searle's concept -- namely that *... 
there should no longer be any doubt what exactly is being talked 
about." Identification in this sense is primarily a process of establish- 
ing a coreferential link between the description in question and some 
other whose referent is in some way known to the hearer. However, 
we again regard identification as an act that the hearer performs, not 
something the speaker does to/for a hearer. If an analysis of this 
"rSincerity can be dispensed with at no significant loss of generality 
SThat is, I am suggesting that the interpretation of how the speaker intends the 
noun phrase to be interpreted le.g., referentially, attributively, etc.} begins with 
such a propositional attitude. If the referential reading is unsuccessful, the hearer 
needs to make other inferences to derive the intended reading. 
extended notion can be made similar in form to the analysis of the 
perceptual identification act, then the IAA completely subsumes the 
PAA. Because both accounts are equally vague on what constitutes 
identification (as are, for that matter, all other accounts of which \[ 
am aware), the choice between them must rest on other grounds. The 
grounds favoring the identification request analysis include the use of 
separate utterances and illocutionary acts for referring, and the inde- 
pendently motivated satisfaction of Searle's conditions on referring. 
5.2. Searle vs. Russell 
Using the propositional act of referring. Searle argues against Rus- 
sews \[13\] theory of descriptions, which holds that the uttering of an 
expression "the ~" is equivalent to the assertion of an uniquely exis- 
tential proposition ~there is a unique ~b". Thus, when reference fails, 
it is because the uniquely existential proposition is nc, t true. Searle 
claims instead that the existence of the referent is a precondition to 
the action of referring. In referring to X, we do not a~ssert that X exists 
any more than we do in hitting X (lbid, p. 1G0.) However, the pre- 
condition is necessary for successful performance. Searle's argument 
against this theory essentially comes down to: 
... It \[Russell's theory\] presents the propositional act of 
definite reference, when performed with definite descrip- 
tions ... as equivalent to the illocutionary act of assert- 
ing a uniquely existential proposition, and there is no 
coherent way to integrate such a theory into a theory of 
illocutionary acts. Under no condition is a prol.J:~itional 
act identical with the illocntionary act of asserti.n, for 
a. propositional act can only occur as part of s, uuc illo- 
cutionary act, never simply by itself (Ibid, p. 15. I 
There are two difficulties with this argument. First, the require- " 
ment that acts of referring be part of an ilk, cutionary act was shown 
to be unnecessarily restrictive. Second, there is a way to assimilate 
the assertion of an existential proposition -- an act that .%arle claims 
does not contain a referring act -- into an analysis of illocutionary 
acts, namely as an indirect req,est fur referent identification. How- 
ever, because an assertion of a uniquely existential proposition may 
fail to convey an indirect request for referent identification (just as 
uttering ~It's cold in here" may fail to convey an iuditert request} 
Searle's argument, though weakened, still stands. 
6. Summary 
There are a number of advantages for treatitq~- refero:lt hh'ntifi- 
cation as an action that speakers request, and thus f~Jr treating the 
speech act of referring as a request. The analysis n-t ,,nly itrc,~tllltS 
for data that Searle's account can\]tot, but it al.<o predicts each of 
Searle's conditions for performing tlw act of slngnlar idei~tifying refer- 
ence, yet it allows for appropriate exteushm into a Idaunitlg Impress. If 
we extend the perceptual use of referent identification t,~ Searl,.':~ more 
general concept of identification, and we correlate a certain {(;ricean) 
propositional attitude with the use of definite determiners in a noun 
phrase, then Searle's analysis is subsumed by the act of requesting 
referent identification. The propositional act of referring is therefore 
unnecessary. 
The promissory note introduced by this approach is to show 
how the same kind of plan-based reasoning u~ed in analyzing indi- 
rect speech acts can take hold when a hearer realizes he cann.t, and 
was not intended to, identify the referent of a description. That is. 
plan-based reasoning should explain how a hearer might decide that 
the speaker's intention cannot be what it appears to be (based on the 
intent correlated with the use of a definite determiner), leading, him, for 
example, to decide to treat a description attributively \[6 I. Moreover, 
such reasoning should be useful in determining intended referents, as 
210 
Ortony I10\] has argued. 
To keep this promise, we need to be specific about speaker- 
intentions for other uses of noun phrases. This will be no easy task. 
One difficulty will be to capture the distinction between achieving ef- 
fects on a hearer, and doing so communicatively {i.e., in the Gricean 
way). Thus, for example, a hearer cannot comply with the illocution- 
ary force of =Quick, don't think of an elephant* because there seems to 
be an "automatic" process of ~concept activation * 11\]. Achieving ef- 
fects non-communicatively, i.e., without the recognition of intent, may 
be central to some kinds of reference. In such cases, speakers would 
be able to identify referents for a hearer. If this held for singular iden- 
tifying reference, then tlwre could be grounds for a propositional act. 
llowever, we might have to give up the Gricean condition (5), which l 
suspect Searle would not want to do. 
Finally, there are obviously many a.~pects of reference that need 
to be accounted for by any comprehensive theory. I make no claims 
{yet) about the utility of the present approach for dealing with them. 
Rather, 1 hope to have opened the door to a formal pragmatics for one 
aspect of referring. 
7. References 
1. Appelt, D. Planning natural language utterances to satisfy mul- 
tiple 9oals. Ph.D. Th., Stanford University, Stanford, Califor- 
nia, December 1981. 
2. Austin, J. L. How to do things with words. Oxford University 
Press, London, 1962. 
3. Cohen, P. R. Pragmatics, speaker-reference, and the modality 
of communication. To appear in Computational Linguistics, 
1984. 
4. Cohen, P. R., & Levesque, If. J. Speech Acts and the Recog- 
nition of Shared Plans. Prec. of the Third Biennial Confer- 
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