Inferring the interpretation of attributive and referential definite descriptions

Three experiments are presented that investigate how people understand definite descriptions, such as The woman who can sing this song will get the job. The woman may refer to a specific woman, the referential use, or it may refer to any woman who fills the description who can sing this song, the attributive use. Experiment 1 showed that people can readily distinguish between the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions in various discourse situations. Experiment 2 used a probe‐recognition task to assess the anaphoric inferences needed to interpret attributive and referential descriptions. The results showed that referential descriptions activate their explicit antecedents, whereas attributive descriptions activate an unspecified member of a class of objects or persons. In Experiment 3, subjects read stories ending with definite descriptions referring to famous people, such as The Prime Minister of England has a rough job. No search was required to understand attributive descriptions beca...