ABSTRACT
In English or any other natural language, the paradigmatic referring devices are singular terms, expressions that purport to denote or designate particular individual people, places, or other objects. Singular terms include proper names, definite descriptions, singular personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and a few others. Keith Donnellan called attention to what he called the referential use, as opposed to the attributive use, of a definite description. Bertrand Russell initially posed the various puzzles in terms of definite descriptions rather than proper names, because he was interested in the logic of the word "the." It is worth noting a solution to the Problems of Apparent Reference to Nonexistents and Negative Existentials, rejected by Gottlob Frege and later even more vehemently so by Russell. Russell's most famous article was called "On Denoting," and in it denoting was taken to be a relation between an expression, considered in abstraction, and the thing that is the expression's referent or denotatum.
