DENOTING PHRASE

denoting phrase: translation

The term with which Russell introduced his famous paper ‘On Denoting’ (Mind, 1905): denoting phrases include definite and indefinite descriptions (a man, some man, any man, the present King of England…) regardless of whether anything is actually denoted by them. In the theory of definite descriptions, and in standard modern logic, the form of sentences containing such phrases is given by means of the quantifiers.