CONVERSATIONALLY RELEVANT DESCRIPTIONS 
Amlchai Kronfeld 
Natural Language Incorporated 
2910 Seventh St. 
Berkeley, CA 94710 
i Abstract 
Conversationally relevant descriptions are definite 
descriptions that are not merely tools for the iden- 
tification of a referent, but are also crucial to the dis- 
course in other respects. I analyze the uses of such 
descriptions in assertions as conveying a particular 
~ype of conversational implicatures. Such implics- 
tures can be represented within the framework of 
possible world semantics. The analysis is extended 
to non-assertive illocutionary acts on the one hand, 
and to indefinite descriptions on the other. 
2 Introduction 
In an earlier paper \[Kronfeld 1986 b I have intro- 
duced the distinction between/unctionagiy and con- 
versationally relevant descriptions. All uses of def- 
inite descriptions for the purpose of referring are 
functional in the sense that they are supposed to 
identify the referent. But some uses of definite de- 
scriptions exhibit a type of relevance (or irrelevance) 
that goes beyond identification purposes. Consider 
the following example. As part of his effort to re= 
cruit more young people into the police force, the 
mayor of New York proclaims in a public speech: 
1 New York needs more policemen. 
Instead of gNew York" he might have used UThe Big 
Apple, s or ~The city by the Hudson, ~ or some such 
description. It would not do, however, to say that 
2 The city with the world's largest Jewish 
community needs more policemen 
even though this description might be useful enough 
in identifying New York for the audience. It is sim- 
ply irrelevant in this context. On the other hand, 
5O 
this same description might be quite relevant in a 
different context. For example, suppose the mayor 
were giving a speech at a reception in honor of Is- 
rael's Prime Minister. Under those circumstances, 
the statement 
$ The city with the world's largest Jewish 
community welcomes Israel's Prime 
Minister. 
would make perfect sense. The difference, of course, 
is in the relevance of the description to the state= 
ment in (3), and its irrelevance to the one in (2). 
Uses of definite descriptions such as illustrated in 
example (3), are what I call conversationally rele- 
vant. 
The distinction between functionally and conver- 
sationally relevant descriptions is part of a general 
model of referring that is based on what I have 
termed the dea4:riptlve approach to reference \[Kron- 
reid 1990\]. An ellucidation of the speech act of refer- 
ring cannot be complete without understanding the 
role of conversationally relevant descriptions in the 
larger discourse. My hypothesis in \[Kronfeld 1086\] 
was that conversationally relevant descriptions func- 
tion as part of implicatures of a particular type. The 
problem is to specify what this type is. An outline 
of a solution is the topic of the present paper. 
3 Implicature 
Why should we think that whenever a conversation- 
ally relevant description is used an implicature al- 
ways exists? The reason for this has to do with 
the fact that discourse is something more than a 
simple sum of the isolated sentences that constitute 
its parts. Discourse consists of a sequence of ut- 
terances that are tied together in ways that make 
sere. Typically, there are m~o~uf why a speaker 
says what he says in the order and manner that 
he says it, and in general a hearer must have a 
clue as to what these reasons are (this is why plan 
recognition is so important for plan-based theories 
of speech acts). Of course, the hearer cannot hope 
to know or even guess all of the reasons that led the 
speaker to participate in the discourse, but he can, 
indeed must, recognize aome of them. As ALlen, Co- 
hen, Gross, Perranlt, and Sidner have pointed out 
\[Allen 1978; Perranlt and Cohen 1978; Alien and 
Perranlt 1978; Allen and Perranlt 1980; Gross and 
Sidner 1986; Sidner 1983; Sidner 1985\], the recog- 
nition of what the speaker is "up to e contributes 
to coherence and comprehensibility of the discourse 
and is essential for the hearer's generation of an ap- 
propriate response. 
Now, the unstated reasons whose recognition is 
required for discourse coherence are by de~nition 
implicated, since they must be inferred in order to 
preserve the assumption that the speaker is being 
cooperative. This is precisely what an implicature 
is. Moreover, turning to conversationally relevant 
descriptions, we should observe that by their very 
nature, they cannot be merely functionally relevant. 
That is, the assumption that they are intended 
merely as tools for identification is not enough to 
make the discourse coherent. This, after all, is pre. 
cisely what distinguishes functionally relevant de- 
scriptious from the conversationally relevant ones. 
Hence, additional assumptions are required in order 
to make sense of the way the speaker uses the latter 
descriptions. These assumptious themselves must 
be implicated. 
Thus, in using a conversationally relevant descrip- 
tion, the speaker implicates something. The con- 
tent of implicatures that accompany such descrip- 
tions depends on circumstances, but they all share 
a rather specific form. My method in uncovering 
this form is this: taking the heater's perspective, I 
begin by postulating that if the referring expremion 
used by the speaker is merely functionally relevant, 
the speaker must be viewed as uncooperative. I then 
outline a sequence of deductions that eliminate the 
apparent conflict between what the speaker says and 
the assumption of his cooperation. 
3.1 Recognition 
The general mechanism for the recognition of a con- 
versationally relevant description follows the famil- 
iar Gricean path. The hearer begins by assuming 
that the referring expression is only functionally 
relevant, and then gets into diflicnlties. An obvi- 
ous strategy is illustrated by Example (3) above. 
At first glance it appears that the mayor violated 
the third maxim of manner ('Be briei~): he used 
61 
a long and cumbersome description ('the city with 
the largeat Jewish couunltym), although a much 
shorter and functionally superior one is available 
('New York'}. However, a hearer can easily make 
sense of the mayor's behavior by assuming that the 
referring expression is not merely a tool for identifi- 
cation. That is, it must be conversationally relevant. 
Another strategy for letting the hearer recog- 
a conversationally relevant description is illus- 
trated by "Smith's murderer ~ (interpreted "attribu- 
tively'). There, the assumption that the description 
is only functionally relevant would lead to an inex- 
plicable violation of the second maxim of quality. 
It is obvious that no one knows yet who murdered 
Smith. Thus, if the description is only functionally 
relevant, the hearer would be pussled as to how the 
speaker could form an opinion about the sanity of a 
person whose identity is unknown to him. 
3.2 Asserted universality 
When a conversationally relevant description is used 
(or implied), the proposition which the speaker is 
trying to express lends itself to the Russellian anal- 
ysis. Thus, if a speaker asserts a statement of the 
form 
4 The D is F, 
and "The D ~ is a conversationally relevant descrip- 
tion, then the proposition expessed by the speaker 
is this: 
5 (3x)(D(x) & (VY)CD(Y) --* x = y) & F(x)). ~ 
Note that (5) is equivalent to the conjunction of 
two propositions. The first one is the uniqueness 
condition: 
6 (U'niquenels) (3z)CDCz) ~ CVy)(DCy) ~ z = y)~). 
The second is a universal generalization: 
.v, (u~-..er,~ztx) ('v'z)(D(.,.) --, F(.,)). 
Both the uniqueness and the universality condi- 
tions have to be satisfied if what the speaker means 
is to be true. But from this it does not follow that 
the speaker ~sert8 these conditions. Both Straw- 
son 11971\] and following him Searle \[1969, 157E.\] 
have argued in their criticism of Russell's theory of 
descriptions that the uniqueness condition, though 
presupposed, is not ~erted. For example, when 
a speaker says that the Queen of England is ill, he 
does not ~ert that there is one and only one Queen 
SContextu~l information may be needed to augment the 
descriptive content of "The D." 
of England. This, no doubt, is true of the unique- 
ness condition, but I think that when a conversa- 
tionally relevant description is used, the un~eerm6/- 
/ty condition is indeed asserted, or at least strongly 
implied. In a sense, what the speaker attempts to 
convey is that any object that is denoted by the 
description "the D t has the property F, and this 
is why it is so natural to insert "whoever he is" in 
the classical examples of attributive uses of definite 
descriptious. By saying "Smith's murderer, who- 
ever he is, is insane" the speaker obviously means 
that for any person, if that person is Smith's mur- 
derer, that person is insane, which has the exact 
same form as (7). Note that the convention for us- 
ing definite descriptions to express universal state- 
ments already exists in the language ('The whale 
is a mammar' i.e., for any z, if z is a whale, then 
z is a mammal). Moreover, very frequently, when 
a conversationally relevant description is used, the 
speaker would maintain that the universality con- 
dition is true even if uniqueness fails. Suppose it 
turns out that not one but two culprits are respon- 
sible for Smith's sorry state. If our speaker asserted 
that Smith's murderer, whoever he is, is insane, he 
is very likely to say now that both are insane, rather 
than withdraw his judgment altogether. All in all, 
it seems to me very plausible to assume that when 
conversationally relevant descriptions are used, the 
universal claim is not only part of the truth condi- 
tious (together with uniqueness), but part of what 
is asserted as well. 
3.3 Justification 
A rational speaker who follows the Gricean max- 
ims is expected, among other things, to obey the 
second maxim of quality. That is, he is expected to 
have "adequate evidence ~ for what he asserts. What 
counts as adequate evidence obviously depends on 
context: we have di~erent standards for assertions 
in a scientific article and in a gossipy chat. Nev- 
ertheless in all verbal exchanges, a speaker is ex- 
pected to be able to provide reasonable justification 
for what he says. He must be able to answer ques- 
tions such as "how do you know?" "why do you 
think so?" and so on. If he cannot, the assumption 
about his cooperation cannot be maintained. 
If a universal statement such as (7) is part of what 
the speaker asserts, he must be able, then, to jus- 
tify it. The hearer may not know exactly what the 
speaker's evidence is for believing this generalisa- 
tlon but the hearer can reason about the type of ev- 
idence or justification that the speaker is expected 
to have. In particular, I want to draw a distinction 
between ezte~ona/ and inten.5~oaal justifications 
of universal statements. This distinction will help 
us see what sort of justification a speaker can offer 
62 
for a statement such as (7) when a conversationally 
relevant description is used. 
The distinction between extensional and inten- 
sional justification of universal statements is based 
on a familiar distinction in the philosophy of sci- 
ence between accidental and law\]ike general;ffiations 
(See Waiters 1967). Not all universal generalls~- 
tions are scientific laws. For example, the following 
statement, although true, is not a law of nature: 
8 All mount~;n, on Earth are le~ than 30,000 
feet high. 
On the other hand, this next statement is: 
9 All basketballs are attracted to the center 
of Earth. 
What is the difference? We\]\], there are several, 
but two related ones are specifically relevant to us. 
First, the latter generalization, but not the former, 
supports counter/actual statement. If a mountain 
on Earth were to be examined a billion years from 
now, would it still be less than 30,000 feet high? We 
don't know. Changes in the surface of the earth oc- 
cur all the time, and Mount Everest needs a mere 
972 additional feet to make (8) false. On the other 
hand, if a player were to make a jump shot a bi\]Hon 
years from now the basketball would still find its 
way down to the ground. A law of nature does not 
lose its v'aHdity over time. 
Second, there is a crucial difference in the man- 
ner in which statements (8) and (9) are ju,~t~fied. 
The gener2l;tation about mountains on earth is sup- 
ported by observation: all mountain, on earth were 
measured and found to be less than 30,000 feet high. 
I do not know why this is so. As far as I am con- 
cerned this is just one more accidental fact about 
the world I llve in. The generalization about bas- 
ketbalk, on the other hand, is derived from a more 
general principle that explains why things such as 
basketballs behave the way they do. Such a deriva- 
tion is an essential part of an explanation of why (9) 
is true. It also contributes to the coherence of our 
experience: what science provides us with, among 
other things, is the reauuring knowledge that nat- 
ural phenomena do not just happen to occur, but 
follow a general scheme that provides the basis for 
both explanation and prediction. Thus, our confi- 
dence in the truth of (9) is not merely the result of 
examining a large sample of basketballs. We also 
have a theory that explains why they do not just 
happen to come down whenever dropped, but, in a 
sense, mu.~t do so. 
Given these two ditrerences between accidental 
and lawl~e statements, let ezten~onal and ~nten- 
a~oas/justifications of universal generalizations be 
defined as follows. An extensional justification of a 
generalization such as "All A's are F" would rely on 
the fact that aLl, or most, or a good sample of the 
things with the property A have been examined and 
were found to have property F. In such a case there 
would not be any attempt to explain why this is so, 
only a claim that as things stand, all A's do, in fact, 
have the property F. An intensional justification of 
a universal generaKsation, on the other hand, would 
attempt to show that anything with the property of 
being A m~t have the property of being P, because 
of a more general principle or theory from wldch the 
gsneral~ation can be derived. 2 
The distinction I have just described is obviously 
not restricted to science, nor am I interested in elu- 
cidating different scientific methods of corrobora- 
tion. Rather, I want to apply this distinction to 
the kind of justification that a speaker is expected 
to have for what he says, in view of Grice's second 
maxim of quail W. In a sense, what I am after is a 
"folk theory" of justification, not the foundation of 
knowledge. Thus, the extensional/intensional dis- 
tinction between types of justification is indifferent 
to the question whether the evidence for a statement 
is good or bad, as an intensional justification can be 
either silly or brilliant. Moreover, the distinction 
applies to all sorts of judgments, not merely theo- 
retical ones. The biggotted justification for holding 
stereotypic beliefs would presumably be extensional 
('Look, I don't know why they are all such dirty 
cowards, but I have met enough of them to know 
that they are:'). On the other hand, when the 
notorious fundamentalist preacher Jimmy Swaggart 
states that all adulterers are sinners, he does not 
intend us to believe that he has examined all (most, 
enough) adulterers and found that they happen to 
be sinners. If someone who is not an adulterer now 
would become one, he would have to be a sinner 
as well, and the reason for that is simple. Within 
$waggart's world view, adulterers rn~t be sinners 
simply because the bible says so, and whatever the 
bible says is true. The same distinction applies to 
the most mundane generalisations that can appear 
in discourse. "A11 the nursery schools in our area are 
simply unacceptable ~ my friend tells me. I assume 
the justification for what he says is extensional (he 
has checked out each and every one), but then he 
adds: "... they are all Montessori schools," and an 
intensional justification is revealed. 
Clearly, extensional and intensional justification 
are not mutually exclusive. Nor do they exhaust the 
types of justification one can use. Thus, the justi- 
fication of the most fundamental principles of any 
theory (scientific or otherwise), although clearly not 
extensional, would not be intensional either, since 
~Statisticai correlations belong to the extensional realm. 
Causal explanatiorm to the intensional one. 
63 
by definition they are not derivable from any other 
principles (they would still support counterfactuak, 
though). However, apart from such fundamental 
ax/oms, the justification of any universal general- 
isation, if it is not extensional, must be intenaionaL 
Now back to the univereali W condition that the 
speaker asserts when he uses a conversationally re\]- 
evant description. As mentioned already, the hearer 
may not know why the speaker believes the general- 
isation, but from the heater's point of view it stands 
to reason that the speaker's justification is inten- 
donul, because of the uniqueness condition. If the 
uniquene~ condition is presupposed, an extensional 
justification of the universal generalization amounts 
to no more than this: there is evidence that the ref- 
erent happens to have the property F. But if this 
were all that the speaker had in mind, it would be 
very misleading to give the impression that a univer- 
sal generalization was meant. To see why, consider a 
case in which an author tells you that all his books 
are published by Cambridge University Press. If 
later you are to find out that he has publi-qhed only 
one book, you would surely be pusaled, although 
as things are, his statement was technically true. 
In other words, if the uniqueness condition is pre- 
supposed, it makes little sense to assert a universal 
generalization, unless the speaker believes that the 
gsneralisation m~t be true whether the uniqueness 
condition is true or not. Thus, if the speaker has in- 
tensional justification for what he says, the unique- 
ncss condition no longer interferes with universality. 
If the author tells you that he has just signed a life- 
time contract with Cambridge University Press, and 
therefore all his books m~t be published there, the 
fact that he has written only one book (so far) does 
not matter any more. In view of the contract, if he 
were to write others, they would be published by 
Cambridge. 
For the speech act to be coherent, therefore, the 
speaker must have an inter~ional justification for 
(7). This is why frequently when a conversation- 
ally relevant description is used (for example, in the 
paradigmatically "attributive ~ uses of definite de- 
scriptious), it is natural to replace the auxiliary verb 
with an appropriately tensed occurrence of "mnst. ~ 
For example, 
10 The inventor of the sewing machine, 
wae very whoever he or she was, ntuet haue been 
smart. 
11 If my political ~nalysis is correct, the. 
Democratic candidate in 1992 will ~.avebVto be 
a conservative. 
12 The thief who stole your diamond ring, 
knew mu,t ~we known how valuable it was. 
My hypothesis, therefore, is that conversationally 
relevant descriptions are used to assert universal 
generalizations for which the speaker has inteusional 
justification. Therefore, when a speaker says "The 
D is F" and "The D" is conversationally relevant, 
a first approbation of what is usually being im- 
plicated is this: 
13 Any D must be F. 
When the modal verb is actually added, the speaker 
simply makes (part of) the implicature explicit. 
3.4 The meaning of "must" 
As it stands, the implicature expressed by (13) is 
hopelessly vague. The problem is with the modal 
verb ~must." How is it to be interpreted? Compare, 
for example, the following uses: 
14 (a) The bird m~t have entered through 
the attic. 
(b) Whether I like it or not, I m~t pay 
my taxes. 
(¢) The Butcher of Lion m,~t pay for his 
crimes. 
If I do not pay my taxes, I will be punished. This is 
why I feel that I must do it. But if the bird did not 
enter through the attic, or if the Butcher of Lion 
does not pay for his crimes, neither bird nor beast 
will be punished as a result of that. Moreover, if the 
bird did not enter through the attic, th e speaker ut- 
tering 14(a) would simply be wrong. But whether or 
not the Butcher of Lion ever pays for his crimes, the 
speaker uttering 14(c) would nevertheless be right. 
Thus, in each case, the intended interpretation of 
the modal verb is radically different. 
Is the word "must" multiply ambiguous then? 
Not necessarily. As Angelika Kratser has argued 
\[1977; 1979; 1981\], the force of modal verbs such as 
"must" is relative to an implied contextual element. 
The examples in 14 are elliptical pronouncements 
whose full meaning can be given by the following: 
15 (a) In view of what we know, the bird 
must have entered through the attic. 
(b) In view of what the law is, I must pay 
my taxes, whether I like it or not. 
(¢) In view of our moral convictions, the 
Butcher of Lion must pay for his 
crimes. 
The interpretation of "must" in each example is 
indeed different, but there is, Kratzer argues, a core 
of meaning which is common to alL This core is 
64 
specified as a/unct/oa that can be precisely formu- 
lated within the framework of possible-world seman- 
tics. Schematically, Kratser's suggestion is that the 
meaning of "must" is given by the function m~t- 
in-dew-o/, which accepts two arguments. One ar- 
gument is the proposition within the scope of the 
modal verb (e.g., The bird came through the attic in 
14(a)). Values for the other argument are phrases 
such as "what is known," awhat the law is," "our 
moral convictions," etc. Thus, for example, sen- 
tence 15(a) is interpreted as 
16 Must=In-View-Of(What is known, The 
bird entered through he attic) 
The sentence is true in possible world uJ just in 
case the proposition expressed by "The bird entered 
through the attic" logically follows from what we 
know in w \[Kratzer 1977, 346\]. 3 
Kratser's suggestion can be used in the elucida- 
tion of the implicature conveyed by a conversation- 
ally relevant description. Let f stand for phrases 
such as "what is known," "What the law is," etc. 
Applying Kratser's analysis to (13) we get 
17 In view of/, any D must be F. 
or more accurately: 
lS Must=In-View-Of(/, any D /a F). 
(18), then, is the implicature conveyed by a typical 
use of a conversationally relevant description. How 
"in view of .f" is to be interpreted is up to the hearer 
to find out, but we may assume that possible val- 
ues for f come from a list that is scanned by the 
hearer until a particular item on the list provides a 
satisfactory interpretation. Such a list may contain 
the following (see Kratzer 1981, 44-45, for possible- 
world interpretation): 
• FactuoJ: In view of facts of such and such 
kinds... (including institutional facts such as 
what the law is). 
aPhrases such as "what is known, ~ "our moral convic- tions, 
n "what the facts are, ~ and so on are represented by 
Krat~er u functions from possible worlds to sets of proposi- 
tions. For example, "what is known ~ is represented as a funo 
tion J" which assigns sets of propositions to possible worlds 
such that for each possible world w, f(w) contains all the 
propositions that are known in that world. According to 
Kratser's first suggestion, for any function / from worlds to 
sets of propositions, and for every proposition P, "It must be 
the case that P in view of f' is true in to just in case/(to) 
entails P. As Kratler notes, this is only the first step in the 
elucidation of the meaning of modal verbs, and it works only 
when .f(to) is guaranteed to be consistent (as is indeed the 
case when f is "what is known ~ ). When/(to) can be incon- 
sistent (e.g., when \[ is ,d~ the/,Lw/e ), problems arise, which 
Kratzer solves using the concept of the set of all consistent subsets. 
• Epiatemi¢: In view of what is known... (or al- 
ternatively, what is believed, assumed, hypoth- 
esised, and so on). 
• Stereotypical: In view of the normal course of 
events... 
• Deontic: In view of what is the right thing to 
do... 
• Teleoloqical: In view of our objectives ... (or 
alternatively, our wishes, our intentions, and 
SO on). 
While the l~t may turn out to be much longer, there 
is no reason to assume that it will be infinite. 
The assumption that a conversationally relevant 
description is used to implicate a modal operator 
provides a formal reason why in paradigmatically 
attributive uses, if nothing fits the description, the 
speech act as a whole must fail. If (18) is part of 
what the speaker means in these cases, the descrip- 
tion is within the scope of a modal operator, hence, 
within an intensional context in which substitution 
is not guaranteed to be a valid form of ;nference. 
Suppose that Ralph asserts that in view of what 
we know about the normal human propensity for 
violence, Smith's murderer, whoever he is, must be 
insane; and suppose Ralph thinks that Smith's mur- 
derer is Jane's uncle. Substituting "Jane's uncle s 
for ~Smith's murderer" yields the wrong result: it is 
not the case that in view of what we know about the 
normal human propensity for violence, Jane's uncle, 
whoever he is, must be insane. Since in general sub- 
stitution is not allowed in intensional contexts, when 
the description fads (i.e., no one murdered Smith), 
Ralph's speech act must fail too. The fact that he 
may know quite well who he thought the culprit was 
does not matter. 
By way of summary, here are the steps that a 
hearer might go through in calculating the implica- 
ture that is typically intended when a conversation- 
ally relevant description is used: 
1. Recognising a conversationally relevant de- 
scription 
2. Identifying the universal generalization 
3. Postulating an intensional justification 
4. Locating an appropriate set of propositions rel- 
ative to which the modal operator is interpreted 
Of course, this mechanism is much more flexible 
than I make it out to be, and a speaker can use it 
to satisfy various other goals. For example, a defi- 
nite description can be used to provide information 
\[Appelt 1985\], or to highlight shared knowledge, or 
simply to avoid mechanical repetition of a proper 
name. The following quotation illustrates how a 
conversationally relevant description can achieve all 
these goals simultaneously: 
65 
19 In the Democratic primaries, Mr. Jackson, 
who is considered a long shot for the 
Vice-Presidential nomination, received more 
than seven million votes. The J6-year-old 
Okieago ele~yman has not said whether he 
wants the second spot on the Democratic 
ticket... (New York Times, June 28, 1988) 
Since the name "Jackson" is already available as 
the best functionally relevant referring expression, 
it should be obvious to the reader that the descrip- 
tion "the 46-year-old Chicago clergyman ~ is con- 
versationally relevant. But if the reader were to go 
through the steps outlined above, he would reach a 
dead end. There is nothing in view of which it m~t 
be the case that any 46 year old Chicago clergyman 
has not said whether he wants the second spot on 
the democratic ticket. Thus, the implicature that 
usually accompanies a conversationally relevant de- 
scription is ruled out. Nor is there an obvious im- 
plicit description that is used to convey a similar 
implicature. The reader is then forced to search for 
other explanations, and one obvious possibility is 
that the author wants to inform the reader (or re- 
mind him) that Jackson is a 46 year old clergyman 
fTom Chicago. 
4 iNon-assertives 
So far I have assumed that the conversationally rele- 
vant description is used within the context of an as- 
sertion, and I have relied, in my derivation of the im- 
pUcature, on the fact that in assertions the speaker 
is expected to have adequate evidence for what he 
says. In other speech acts, however, evidence and 
justification play a completely different role, if any. 
For example, a speaker who asks a question is not 
expected to have Xevidence~ for it. Still, the use of 
conversationally relevant descriptions is clearly not 
restricted to assertions. Consider the following: 
20 \[After the verdict is pronounced, the Mayor 
to the District Attorney\] 
Congratulations on nailing the ntogt 
fearsome criminal in recent Ai~tory. 
21 \[While the serving plate is passed around, a 
guest to the hostJ 
I am not very hungry. Could I have the 
sntalle~t ~teak please? 
22 \[A young cop to his superior, as the chase he~\] 
One thing I can promise you: I will not let 
Smith's murderer get away! 
A detailed description of how my account can be 
extended to cover these cases would take us too far 
afield. In general, however, the same analysis can 
apply to non-assertions such as the above as welL 
Coherence is no leas important in discourse contain- 
ing requests, warnings, promises, etc. than in one 
containing assertives. The hearer must understand 
the reasons tuhy a congratulation, a request, or a 
promise are being performed, and the role of conver- 
sationally relevant descriptions in such speech acts 
would be similar to their roles in assertives, with 
similar impficatures. As rough approximations, the 
implicatures involved in the three examples above 
are expressed by the following statements, respec- 
tively: 
• In view of the danger that criminals pose to 
society, nailing the most fearsome criminal in 
recent history is an act that must be congratu- 
lated. 
• In view of my wish to stay both slim and polite, 
I must have the smallest steak. 
• In view of my moral convictions, I should try 
my best to bring Smith's murderer to justice. 
5 Indefinite descriptions 
In this paper I take referring exp~ssious to be uses 
of noun phrases that are intended to indicate that a 
particular object is being talked about. Hence, in- 
definite descriptions can obviously serve as referring 
expressions, and the distinction between functional 
and conversational relevance should apply to them 
as well. Usually, a use of an indefinite description as 
a referring expression signals to the hearer that the 
identity of the referent is not important (e.g., IA 
policeman gave me a speeding ticketJ). Some uses 
of indefinite descriptions, however, are clearly made 
with the intention that the hearer identify whom 
the speaker has in mind. For example, 
23 A person I know did not take out the 
garbage as he had promised... 
Here, identification is obviously required, but it does 
not matter at all how the referent is identified. The 
indefinite description is, therefore, only functionally 
relevant. In contrast, consider the following 
24 A cardioeaacuclar s~ci~t told me that I 
exercise too much. 
Although the identity of the physician is not impor- 
tant, the fact that he is a cardiovascular specialist 
surely is. The indefinite description is, therefore, 
con~ersatiqnally relevant. 
Deborah Dalai discusses interesting cases in which 
an indefinite description is both spe¢if~ (i.e., used 
with the intention that the hearer know the identity 
of the referent) and attributive (that is, conversa- 
tionally relevant). Here is one of her examples: 
25 Dr. Smith told me that exercise helps. Since 
I heard it from a doctor, I'm inclined to 
believe it \[Dahl 1984\]. 
Clearly, an accurate interpretation of aa doctor ~ 
would connect the referent with Dr. Smith. At the 
same time, the use of the indefinite description high- 
lights a property of Smith which is conversationally 
relevant. Note that the indefinite description is used 
to implicate a universal generaliffiation, namely, that 
in view of what doctors know, any doctor who gives 
you an advice, should (other things being equal) be 
listened to. This is very similar in structure to the 
implkature that is typically associated with conver- 
sationally relevant definite descriptions. 
As is the case with definite descriptions, such uses 
of indefinite descriptions can accomplish other pur- 
poses besides (or instead of) implicating a universal 
gsneralization. For example, 
26 In fact, the Dewey-Truman matchup 
illustrates the point. Mr. Truman was 
thought to be a weak leader who could not 
carry out his strong predecessor's program. 
His election prospects were bleak. The 
pundits were against him and a highly 
successful Northe~tsrn Governor was 
poised to sweep into the White House. 
(New York Times, May 26, 1988)' 
The calculation of the impllcature conveyed by the 
indefinite description is left as an exercise for the 
reader. 
REFERENCES 
Allen, J. F. 1978. Recogn/~/ng Intention in Dia- 
logue. Ph.D. di~s., University of Toronto. 
Allen, J. F. and C. R. Perrault. 1978. Participat- 
ing in dialogues: understanding via plan de- 
duction. In Proceedings , Canadian Society for 
Computational Studies of Intelligence. 
ALlen, J. F. and C. R. Perrault. 1980. Analyzing 
intention in dialogues. Artificial Intelligence, 
15(3):143-178. 
Appelt, D. E. 1985. Planning Engl~h Sentences. 
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge. 
Dahl, Deborah A. 1984. Recognizing sepcific at- 
tributes, presented at the 59th Annum Meet- 
ing of the Linguistic Society of America. Bal- 
timore. 
4In this op-ed, piece the author argues that polls showing 
Michael Dukakis leading George Bush in the race for the pres- 
idency do not mean much. Note that in May 1988, Dukakis is the Governor of Mauachusetts, a Northeastern state. 
66 
Gross, B. J. and C. L. Sidner. 1986. Attention, in- 
tantions, and the structure of discourse. Com- 
putational I, infuiatics, 12(3):175-204. 
Krat~r, A. 1977. What 'must' and 'can' must 
and can mean. Linguia64:s and Philosophy, 1(1):337-335. 
Kratser, A. 1979. Conditional necessity and pos- 
edbility. In U.Egli R.l~uerle and A.Von Ste. 
chow, editors, Semantics for Different Point8 
of Fie,o, pp. 117-147, Spriager-Verlag , Berlin. 
Krat~r, A. 1981. The notional category of modal- 
ity. In H. J. Eikmeyer and H. Rieeer, stil- 
ton, Words, Worlds, and Contexts: New Ap- 
proaches in Word Semantlcs, pp. 38-74, Walter 
de Gruyter, Berlin. 
Kronfeld, A. 1986. Donnellan's distinction and x 
computational model of reference. In Proceed- 
infs of the P~th Annual Meeting, pp. 186-191, 
AJmociation for Computational Linguistic& 
Kroafeld, A. 1990. Reference and Computation: 
an Eesall in Applied Philosophy of Language. 
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge. 
Perranlt, C. R. , J. F. Alien, and P. R. Cohen. 
1978. Speech acts as a basis for understanding 
dialogue coherence. In TINI, AP-£, pp. 125- 
132, University of m~nois, Urbana~Champaign. 
Searle, J. R. 1969. Speech Ac~: An Essay in 
the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge Univ. 
Press, Cambridge. 
Sidner, C. L. 1983. What the speaker means: the 
recognition of speakers' plans in discourse. In. 
ternational Journal of Computers and Mathe. 
rustics, 9(1):71-82. 
Sidner, C. L. 1985. Plan parsing for intended re- 
sponse recognition in discourse. Computational 
Intelligence, 1(1):1-10. 
Strawson, P. F. 1971. On referring. In J.F Rosen- 
berg and C. Travis, editors, Reading in the 
Philosophy of Language, Prentice Hall, Engle- 
wood, N. J. 
Waiters, R. S. 1967. The Encyclopedia of Philos- 
ophy, pp. 410-414. Volume 4, Macmillan, New 
York. s.v. "laws of science and lawlike state- 
ments'. 
67 
