Descriptions, Linguistic Topic/Comment, and Negative Existentials: A Case Study in the Application of Linguistic Theory to Problems in the Philosophy of Language

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter I give an explanation for these data on cleft statements, introduce the notions of topic/comment from linguistics that are required to elaborate the explanation, defend my theoretical approach from an attack by Keith Donnellan, and apply the theory so developed to the vexing and infamous case of negative existence statements. Surprisingly my linguistic analysis of the topics of explicit, informative, negative existence statements, for example, The king of France does not exist , shows that the statement is not about the king of France, and so my analysis contradicts Bertrand Russell’s (1903) analysis in The Principles of Mathematics . It was the ultimately unsatisfactory metaphysical and semantical consequences of his about nessanalysis of negative existence statements in 1903 that motivated Russell (1905) to create his theory of de finite descriptions.