The Semantics of Complex Demonstratives Problems And Approaches

Complex demonstratives are linguistic expressions of the form "that F", that result from combining demonstrative pronouns with simple or complex common noun phrases. There are two well-known theories about the semantic behavior of complex demonstratives: the first is the direct reference theory and the second is the quantificational theory. According to direct reference theory, complex demonstratives are referring terms and their contents, in demonstrative use, are individuals, and 'f' contributes to fixing the referent of "that F" but contributes nothing to the semantic content of the containing sentence. By contrast, quantificational theory treats complex demonstratives as quantifier phrases, and holds that a two-place relation between properties is contributed to the proposition expressed by the sentence containing the complex demonstrative. This theory claims to account for all sorts of uses of complex demonstratives, such as, demonstrative, NDNS, QI, bound-variable and anaphoric, which have been used by the defenders of this theory to pose objections to the direct reference theory. Yet, direct reference theorists not only can reply to these objections, but also present problems involving given uses in modal contexts and other contexts against quantificational theory, that such contexts can raise serious difficulties for quantificational theory. Altogether, it seems the direct reference theory presents more intuitive explanation about the complex demonstratives