This volume, and expanded edition of the philosophy of language issue of the journal Midwest Studies in Philosophy (1977), includes essays by some of the foremost exponents of the most influential current approaches to the philosophy of language. There are new contributions to this edition by Keith S. Donnellan, Jerrold J. Katz, Barbara Partee, John Searle, Richmond Thomason and Zeno Vendler. Essays drawn from the original edition are by W. V. Quine, Keith S Donnellan, Stephen Schiffer, Donnis W. Stampe, Baruch A Brody, Panayot Butchvarov, Fred I. Dretske, Jaegwon Kim, David Shwayder, J. O. Urmson, Michael Levin, David E. Cooper, John Wallace, Hector-Neri Castaneda, Howard K Wettstein, Herbert Hochberg, Nelson Goodman, Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Root, Bruce Aune, Donald Davidson, and Saul Kripke.

Of special interest in the original edition was Kripke’s paper “Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference, Descriptions, and Anaphora,” Presents a rebuttal to Kripke’s essay and attempts to establish referential attributive distinction as semantically significant.