ABSTRACT
Discussions of the meaning of the definite article have been of two general types, the logical and the pragmatic. Logical approaches have been principally concerned with specifying the truth conditions of definite descriptions, and the best known is that of Russell, with modifications made by Strawson. The pragmatic approaches include most traditional linguistic treatments, as well as more recent work in, or influenced by, the theory of speech acts. Among traditional linguistic studies of the meaning of the, the most thorough and interesting is that of Christophersen. He proposes familiarity with the referent on the part of speaker and hearer as the condition for use of the definite article. To summarise the findings of this investigation, the definite article indicates two things. First, that the referent is part of a shared set, a pragmatically restricted set of entities constituted by the previous discourse, the situation, or an association set. Second, that the reference is unambiguous within the shared set.
