Peano and Grice on 'the'

Speranza

According to

http://www.clear-english.com/ds-eng/donnellan.html

the pronunciation of "Donnellan" in IPA (International Phonetic Association) notation is

/'dɑnəlæn/

 

So someone mispronouncing Donnellan's surname may still be referring to him (Black always did).

Whitehead and Russell borrow (but never return) from Giuseppe Peano "ɿ" -- what Peano calls the inverted iota operator, to read as ‘the’.

It is used in expressions for definite descriptions, such as (ɿx)φx, which is read: "the x such that φx".

[(ɿx)φx] -- a definite description in brackets -- is a scope indicator for definite descriptions.

Finally, E! is defined at *14·02, in the context E!(ɿx)φx, to mean that the description (ɿx)φx is proper, i.e., there is exactly one φ.