Sharvy’s theory of descriptions: a paradigm subverted

Richard Sharvy’s ‘A more general theory of definite descriptions ’ was pub-lished in 1980. Its aim was to replace Russell’s paradigm by a general theory of definite descriptions, of which definite mass descrip-tions, definite plural descriptions, and Russellian definite singular count descriptions are species....We have an account of the generic ‘the’ along these same lines. (622; all references are to Sharvy 1980 unless otherwise noted) By now his theory has attained the status of a new paradigm. Even a casual trawl of the literature throws up over a score of citations and endorsements, and no rebuttals of its central contention that the primary use of ‘the ’ is to indicate totality (621). We shall argue that it is wrong for mass description, wrong for singular description, wrong for plural description and wrong for generic ‘the’. Sharvy would have approved: his obituary says that his car displayed the slogan ‘Subvert the Dominant Paradigm’. He follows Russell in treating descriptions as incomplete symbols, bu