Frege and Kaplan on Reference
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Gotlob Frege is the OG of the philosophy of language. His work Sense and Reference is probably one of the most foundational work in philosophy of Language. We will read the translated work.
David Kaplan's Demonstratives is a seminal paper attempting to formally describe how the metaphysical use of language might work. He outlines important contextual aspects of ostensive definition. The paper is dense but I have read it about 100 times so if you find yourself lost, we can discuss it in detail.
I have taught the paper in grad school. There is also a link below to a study guide which defines the terms which are esoteric semantics jargon.
Frege: https://ia803206.us.archive.org/10/items/OnSenseAndReference/Frege%20-%20On%20Sense%20and%20Reference.pdf
More in-depth study guide: https://philopedia.org/works/on-sense-and-reference/
Kaplan: https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/roberts.21/NYU/Kaplan.demonstratives.pdf
Short study guide: https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/453/KaplanDemoDisplay.pdf
A bit more: https://sandyber.github.io/philosophy/pdfs/phillang/2017/handout11.pdf
