“Attributive ” Uses of Definite Descriptions Are Always Attributive

The scope of this short paper is to show that the examples İlhan İnan uses to undermine Donnellan’s distinction (primarily, the attributive uses of definite descriptions in general) fall short on account of wrong interpretation those examples were provided with in his paper. Whilst İlhan İnan showed how complex defi-nite descriptions (having an embedded referential term) may cause doubts as to which category they should be put in, these referring terms only play a secondary role. I argue that all of his three key examples are, in fact, sheer attributive uses of definite descrip-tions and have to be taken as such, which seriously diminishes the pedestal İnan places his argument on. My main business here is the examination of a certain argument of İlhan İnan. The general issue İnan [3] addresses himself is to show that what Donnellan calls attributive use (as opposed to referential use), does not qualify as being attributive. In his view, complete definite descriptions we normally use are complex, in that they have an embedded singular term that is used referentially. This, in effect, is the point from which he draws his conclusion, that an attributive use of such expressions is an “extremely rare linguistic phenomenon, much less frequent then what Donnellan, Kripke and Salmon have presupposed [...]” It will not be my intention here to offer a more thorough analysis of Kripke’s, Salmon’s even Donnellan’s theory of the subject-matter than İnan himself offered. Enough has been said from his part, thereby allow-ing me to pursue my own thoughts. I would like to confess that I mean to be purely destructive here, thus not show that definite descriptions can be accounted in some other way than what has been said so far. I will only aim to show that İnan’s examples of what he takes to be “false attributive uses”, are in fact, sheer attributive uses, while the embedded singular term only serves to play a secondary role. Donnellan’s [1] definition (or better, picture) of attributive uses of definite descriptions is when a speaker “wishes to assert something abou