Sense and Denotation

Abstract

One of the basic concepts of both natural and formalised languages is that of ‘name’. It is of course a term that has manifold uses not only in natural language, but also in linguistics, logic and mathematics. From the point of view of semantics the most essential question is that of the entities to which a name can be related. The mathematician G. Frege cannot be credited with being the first to tackle this kind of problem, since questions along these lines can be encountered throughout the evolution of logic and, naturally, linguistics as well. But Frege was the first to come up with a sufficiently general solution, partly be generalising the concept of ‘name’ and partly by not confining his solution to the problems and needs of linguistics and the analysis of natural language, setting out instead from the needs of mathematical and logical thinking.¹