Consider the following phrase:
The airplane is missing its wings
Given that wings are part of the definition of an airplane, why is it correct to use “the airplane” to refer to an airplane without wings?
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A man without legs is still a man. There's a difference between definitional properties and accidental ones.– John LawlerCommented Sep 28, 2021 at 15:57
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Thanks John. But isn’t the wings part of the definitional properties of an airplane? What do you mean by accidental ones?– ShuzhengCommented Sep 28, 2021 at 16:04
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Human beings have 5 toes on each foot; this is an accidental property. It's characteristic but not definitional. Living human beings have one head; this is a defining property. Definitions are after the fact; they are invented by people to justify phenomena, but they don't create the phenomena -- they're just words and have no power. This is not true for abstract phenomena; if they're not physical, they have to be what you say they are, but if they are physical, they are what they are and words don't change them.– John LawlerCommented Sep 28, 2021 at 16:10
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Thanks @JohnLawler. I see now that word definitions in common dictionaries are not real definitions. Where are such definitions then stated?– ShuzhengCommented Sep 28, 2021 at 16:16
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2@Shuzheng If this is basically an exercise in the Ship of Theseus conundrum, I suggest that it migrate to philosophy.stackexchange.com– Andy BonnerCommented Sep 28, 2021 at 17:07
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2 Answers
I'm not sure whether this is a profound (or maybe willfully obtuse?) question about semiotics and the nature of being, or a very simple but confused question about articles. You seem to assume a relationship between "definite article" and "definition." If your question is "At what point does an airplane become not-an-airplane," that's a philosophical question, not on-topic here. (And surely wings are only a part of the definition, and by any reasonable construction it is still "an airplane." Amputees might object to any sophistry that considers them non-human.)
But that's irrelevant, since the signifier "the airplane" can refer backwards to an earlier identification. Barring an in media res situation, the definite article usually refers to an entity already under discussion. Consider this example:
The witch picked up a frog and dripped a drop of potion on it. There was a puff of smoke, and when it cleared, the frog had become a bird.
First of all, notice that the first introduction of the frog uses the indefinite article. But in the second sentence, even though the frog was entirely no longer a frog, we can meaningfully refer to it as "the frog" as a shorthand for "the entity recently identified as a frog and under immediate discussion."
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Thanks @AndyBonner. I’ve a background in mathematics and thus (possible) an unhealthy relationship with definitions. I like your frog example. But it doesn’t answer the following: is it correct to refer to “the airplane” for an airplane under construction? In that case, it has never been an airplane.– ShuzhengCommented Sep 28, 2021 at 16:11
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The point of the frog is that we can use an identifier to refer to an idea of an object whether it exists or not. Past or future: "They're going to build a skyscraper on this barren plot of dirt. The skyscraper will be 20 stories tall." ... Actualized or purely theoretical: "Had Germany won World War I, mid-century European politics would have been very different. The Europe we will never know would have..." Commented Sep 28, 2021 at 17:12
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Ahh, this makes sense! So, the identifier is e.g. “the frog”? You haven’t used the term “identifier” earlier in your clarification. So, when I say “the airplane is missing its wings”, “the airplane” is referring to the object under consideration perceived w.r.t my idea of an airplane, and hence it is missing it wings?– ShuzhengCommented Sep 28, 2021 at 17:41
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@Shuzheng Again, this is a philosophical question more than a grammatical one, but yes, I can use a noun to refer to an object that is an incomplete, inadequate, or unrealized instance of that noun. And definite vs indefinite article has nothing to do with it. If I find 200 pieces of wreckage in the jungle, I might at some point realize their origin and exclaim of the debris field, "This is an airplane!" If I sold it as "an airplane" I'd be committing fraud, but in my exclamation I link the deconstructed reality to an imagined abstract ideal. Commented Sep 28, 2021 at 17:48
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2The linguistics of this construction was addressed by Paul Postal in his "Linguistic Anarchy Notes", where he posed questions like "In the sentence Frank's house burnt down, but he rebuilt it, what does it refer to?" Commented Sep 28, 2021 at 19:57
Given that wings are part of the definition of an airplane, why is it correct to use “the airplane” to refer to an airplane without wings?
You have not shown that the given assumption is a necessary assumption, or that words rely on rigid definitions. Other answers have tried to show that the mental space is flexible.
I am not very well read in semantics (which is a topic in philosophy for sure, but not exclusively so, and obviously topical in linguistics and any given language), so it may be misleading to point out Relations between Objects and Memory (2011, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main, Ed. Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt) with relevant articles.
Renate Bartsch, Concept formation, memory and Understanding:
This article presents an alternative to the traditional notion of concepts and their assumed functions in descriptions and understanding, developed in Bartsch (1998) and Bartsch (2002), will function in developing an alternative to the traditional thinking about memory as a huge library or set of ready-made images or (propositional) representations of past events. [...]
It is a "recapitulation" of Bartsch (2005, preview).
This is flanked by Novak and Lamb, Nouns and verbs in the mental lexicon, Garnham and Cowles, Mental models and noun-phrase anaphora, and more, with many further references (eg. to Frege, who is well known as Philosopher).
This should imply, at least, that questions such as yours are hot research topics for a while now, especially as neurology is gaining ground.
It is also directly relatable, if "The airplane" is an anaphora, as was circumscribed in one comment.
[...] the signifier "the airplane" can refer backwards to an earlier identification. [@AndyBonner]
This is not quite cutting it. Garnham and Cowles show convincingly (ie. I did not believe it but found myself doing it) that "[...] the use of what is naturally analyzed as an anaphoric expression occurs without a linguistic antecedent, or at least without a linguistic antecedent with the same meaning.":
(1) John used to dream a lot, but he never remembered them.
Just as you argue about definitions, they concede that "A standard antecedent for a definite pronoun such as them would refer to the same thing (or set of things) as the pronouns, for example in (2)."
(2) John used to have a lot of dreams, but he never remembered them.
In their conclusion, there are at least two points that are relevant to our question. Identity of reference anaphora refers to an entity that has been introduced explicitly or implicitly. Anaphora by direct repition of the noun-phrase originally used to introduce the entity is relatively rare and can often sound infelicitous. I.e. * The airplane has lost the airplane's wings. They admit that there is no general concensus how this is to be explained and that, for complex texts, focusing is relatively complex phenomenon, and that its operation is not fully understood.
