Abstract
The meanings of certain referential expressions (definite singular noun phrases of the form Def Art + N, and simple singular proper names) are studied in connection with fictionality and the problem of a fictitious narrator. Author-independent meanings of Art + N expressions are distinguished from textual meanings. The former are constructed as relations of a certain kind between possible utterances and possible speakers; the latter are, in the simplest case, such relations as holding between a specific (original) copy of the text and the author. In the case of a fictional text without a fictitious narrator, a textual meaning of a referential expression is ‘the pretending of’ a certain author-independent meaning; if there also is a fictitious narrator, it is ‘the pretending of the narrator version of’ an author-independent meaning. In either case the textual meanings are construed as relations between utterances and speakers that hold between a copy of the text and the author. This analysis is carried over to proper names in fictional texts with a fictitious narrator and is extended to cover proper names that occur in such texts and are apparently used to refer to objects in the actual world. The proposed semantic analysis of referential expressions in fictional texts with a fictitious narrator completely avoids assumption of fictitious objects.
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