Definite Descriptions and the Alleged East-West Variation in Judgments about
Reference
Yu Izumia∗ , Masashi Kasakib , Yan Zhouc , Sobei Odaca Kyoto University, Graduate School of Letters, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Kyoto, 6068501

Japan
b Nagoya University, Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Aichi, 4648601

Japan
c Kyoto Sangyo Daigaku, Division of Economics, Kita-ku, Kyoto, Kyoto, 6038555, Japan∗

Corresponding author. E-mail address: yuizumi@nanzan-u.ac.jp

This is the penultimate draft of a paper published in Philosophical Studies. Please cite the final
version.

Abstract
Machery et al. (2004) presented data suggesting the existence of cross-cultural variation in judgments about the reference of proper names. In this paper, we examine a previously overlooked confound in the subsequent studies that attempt to replicate the results of (Machery et al., 2004) using
East Asian languages. Machery et al. (2010; 2015) and Sytsma et al. (2015) claim that they havesuccessfully replicated the original finding with probes written in Chinese and Japanese, respectively. These studies, however, crucially rely on uses of articleless, ‘bare noun phrases’ in Chineseand Japanese, which according to the linguistic literature are known to be multiply ambiguous. We
argue that it becomes questionable whether the extant studies using East Asian languages revealed
genuine cross-cultural variation when the probes are reevaluated based on a proper linguistic understanding of Chinese and Japanese bare noun phrases and English definite descriptions. We alsopresent two experiments on native Japanese speakers that controlled the use of ambiguous barenoun phrases, the results of which suggest that the judgments of Japanese speakers concerning thereference of proper names may not diverge from those of English speakers.

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Keywords
Experimental philosophy, Cross-cultural semantics, Proper names, Definite descriptions, Articleless noun phrases

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank James Beebe, Kent Erickson, Edouard Machery, Alex Rausch, and an
anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on earlier drafts. We are also grateful to the audiencesat the 2015 Japan Forum for Young Philosophers, the 2015 Buffalo Annual Experimental Philosophy Conference, the 2016 Central APA Meeting, and at Queen’s University Belfast and Soochow
University. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research(26770006) and for JSPS Fellows (15J06699).

1

Introduction

It is commonly assumed that philosophers of language (along with linguists working on the semantics and pragmatics of natural languages) appeal to their judgments about linguistic expressions in
defending or criticizing particular theses about language. Machery et al. (2004) question the legitimacy of the use of these judgments on the grounds that there may be variation in them between
Westerners and East Asians. More specifically, Machery et al. (2004) make a case for two claims:
first, that they have found evidence showing that Westerners and East Asians have substantiallydifferent judgments about the reference of proper names, and second, that these differences havefar-reaching implications for the methodology of the philosophy of language.
Both claims have attracted a fair amount of criticism. Many philosophers doubt that themethodological implications follow from Machery et al.’s experimental results even granted thatthey are legitimate and robust.1 The focus of this paper is, however, exclusively on the first claim
1

For example, see (Deutsch, 2009, 2010, 2015; Devitt, 2011; Ichikawa et al., 2012; Martı́, 2009, 2012) for theoretical defenses of the traditional methodology, and see (Machery, 2011; Machery and Stich, 2012; Machery et al., 2013;
Machery, 2014) for responses and further philosophical discussions.
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that the study conducted by Machery et al. (2004) provides evidence for genuine cross-culturalvariation in semantic judgments about proper names. Accordingly, we will not discuss the possible existence of intra-cultural variation in semantic judgments (e.g. Machery et al. 2009; Machery2012) and the possible challenges inter- or intra-cultural variation may pose to the traditional
methodology in the philosophy of language (e.g. Machery 2014).
Machery et al.’s alleged evidence for the existence of the cross-cultural variation has also been
scrutinized on many different fronts. Theorists suspect that Machery et al.’s study included experimental confounds or implicit factors that inadvertently influenced the responses of the participants. The possible confounds that have been pointed out in the literature include: the distinction between speaker’s and semantic reference (Ludwig, 2007; Deutsch, 2009), the distinction between linguistic and metalinguistic intuitions (Martı́, 2009; Devitt, 2011), the distinction between
the perspective of the narrator (or the reader) and the perspective of the character in the vignette(Sytsma and Livengood, 2011), the use of English probes rather than probes written in native languages (Lam, 2010), and the unintended effects of the factive verb learn (Beebe and Undercoffer,2016).2
Machery and other experimental philosophers (Machery et al., 2009, 2010, 2015; Sytsma et al.,2015; Beebe and Undercoffer, 2016) have addressed the concerns arising from these possible confounds and arguably shown that the reported cross-cultural variation remains even when thesefactors are controlled. In particular, in response to Lam’s (2010) criticism that the original study
was conducted exclusively using English rather than a native East Asian language, Machery et al.
(2010) and Sytsma et al. (2015) claim that they have successfully replicated the original finding
with probes written in Chinese and Japanese, respectively.
In the original and subsequent studies, however, there is a yet another possible confound that
may have influenced the outcomes of the experiments. The crucial factor that has been overlooked in previous research is that a great number of the world’s languages, including Chinese
2

Adopting the notational conventions in the linguistics literature, besides emphasized words, we write objectlanguage expressions in italics. Single quotation marks are used to refer to expressions and also to introduce themeaning of an object-language expression (e.g., inu ‘dog’). Occasionally, when no confusion arises, we refer toJapanese expressions using English expressions flanked by single quotation marks in order to save space.
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and Japanese, are articleless languages that have no overt counterpart of the definite article the inEnglish, while the probes used by Machery et al. (2004) essentially rely on definite descriptions,expressions of the form the F. The Chinese and Japanese probes used by Machery et al. (2010)
and Sytsma et al. (2015) contain so-called articleless, ‘bare’ noun phrases, which they assume tobe strictly analogous to the definite descriptions used in the original English probes. In the linguistics literature, however, bare noun phrases are known to be multiply ambiguous (Chierchia,
1998; Cheng and Sybesma, 1999; Izumi, 2011, 2012), and they may have distorted the responsesof the Chinese or Japanese speaker participants. Let us call this possible confound the ‘noun phrase
ambiguity’.
In what follows, we will argue that it becomes questionable whether the previous studies revealed genuine cross-cultural variation given the linguistic differences between English definite
descriptions and Chinese and Japanese bare noun phrases. We will also report two experiments
on native Japanese speakers in which the alleged cross-cultural variation disappeared when thenoun phrase ambiguity was removed by using Japanese phrases that are more analogous to English
definite descriptions than simple bare noun phrases.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: section 2 introduces the basic characteristics ofChinese and Japanese bare noun phrases; section 3 discusses a major problem arising from the nounphrase ambiguity in the extant studies that attempted to replicate Machery et al.’s (2004) original
finding using an East Asian language (Machery et al., 2010; Sytsma et al., 2015); section 4 presents
two experimental studies that evaluate the effects of the noun phrase ambiguity, suggesting thatnative Japanese speakers have semantic judgments about proper names that may be comparable tothose of native English speakers; and section 5 concludes the paper by revisiting the original studyin (Machery et al., 2004) in light of this new discovery.

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2Articleless Bare Noun Phrases

Articleless, bare noun phrases in languages such as Chinese and Japanese can have a variety ofinterpretations primarily depending on the choice of predicate and the context of use. As shownin the Japanese examples (1–4) below, sentences that contain a bare noun phrase (e.g., inu ‘dog’)
generally yield four different types of interpretations. First, a discourse-initial use of (1) makes
an existential claim involving some or other dog or some or other group of dogs; it can assert
the existence of more than one dog, because Japanese (as well as Chinese) nouns are typically
number-neutral in the sense that there is no morphological singular-plural distinction, and they arecompatible with both singular and plural interpretations. Second, the same bare noun in (2) canbe used to refer to a particular, contextually salient dog (or a group of dogs). One interpretation
available to (2) is that it is a claim about the dog that has been already mentioned in discourse;
adding a relative clause sakki hoeteita (‘that was barking earlier’) would help identify which dog
the speaker has in mind (again, a plural reading is also available). Third, (3) is clearly concernedwith the whole canine species, not merely with some or other dogs, and forth, (4) attributes a
specific property to the vast majority of dogs.
(1)

Inu-ga hoeta.
dog-NOM barked“A dog/dogs barked.” (Indefinite)(2)(Sakki hoeteita)
inu-ga bar-ni haittekita.
earlier barking.was dog-NOM bar-to entered.
“The dog/dogs that was/were barking earlier entered the bar.” (Definite)(3)

Inu-ga zetumetusita.
dog-NOM extinct.became“Dogs went extinct.” (Kind or species)(4)

Inu-ga hoeru no-wa
atarimae-da.
dog-NOM bark COMP-TOP obvious-be“It’s obvious that dogs bark.” (Generic)(1–2) together show that Japanese bare noun phrases can play the roles similar to ‘indefi-

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nite’ and ‘definite’ descriptions in English, while (3–4) further show that they are also comparable to plural count nouns and mass terms in English, such as dogs and water, which often yield‘kind/species’ and ‘generic’ interpretations. Mandarine and Cantonese Chinese are also known to
exhibit the same interpretive variability (Cheng and Sybesma, 1999).
It is true that the predicate taking a bare noun phrase as an argument often limits the range ofpossible interpretations available to that noun. For example, the predicate ‘x entered the bar’ in (2)would be incompatible with a kind or species interpretation (it is hard to imagine a circumstancein which a whole animal species enters any one place). There are predicates, however, that arecompatible with all four interpretations. Consider ‘John is talking about x’. This predicate is,of course, compatible with a definite and an indefinite interpretation of a bare noun (as well aswith English definite and indefinite descriptions). Furthermore, as the following Japanese andEnglish sentences suggest, the predicate is clearly compatible with a kind (or species) and a genericinterpretation.
(5)a. John-wa tora nituite hanasiteiru. John-wa tora-ga
2020 nen madeni
John-TOP tiger about is.talking. John-TOP tiger-NOM 2020 year byzetumetusuru
to syuchousiteiru.
become.extinct.nonpast that claims.
“John is talking about tigers. He claims that they will become extinct by 2020.” (Kindor species)
b. John-wa tora nituite hanasiteiru. John-wa tora-ga
zassyoku dewa nai toJohn-TOP tiger about is.talking. John-TOP tiger-NOM omnivore be not thatsyuchousiteiru.
claims.
“John is talking about tigers. He claims that they aren’t omnivores.” (Generic)Two observations about bare noun phrases must be noted here: first, they can yield four different types of interpretations (the indefinite, definite, kind or species, and generic interpretations),
and second, the predicate ‘John is talking about x’ is compatible with all of them. These two
observations pose a challenge to previous research involving East Asian languages.

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3

Bare Noun Phrases in Experimental Philosophy

In this section, first, we outline the past experimental studies that tested the semantic judgments ofEast Asians using bare noun phrases. Second, we argue that these studies have a problem arisingfrom the multiple interpretive possibilities of bare noun phrases introduced in the last section (thenoun phrase ambiguity).
In Machery et al.’s (2004) original probes, the questions asked were formulated using English
definite descriptions. Consider the probe inspired by Kripke’s (1980) Gödel case, which ends withthe disjunctive question containing two definite descriptions (6).
Suppose that John has learned in college that Gödel is the man who proved an importantmathematical theorem, called the incompleteness of arithmetic. John is quite good at mathematics and he can give an accurate statement of the incompleteness theorem, which he attributes to Gödel as the discoverer. But this is the only thing that he has heard about Gödel.
Now suppose that Gödel was not the author of this theorem. A man called ‘Schmidt’,
whose body was found in Vienna under mysterious circumstances many years ago, actually did the work in question. His friend Gödel somehow got hold of the manuscript andclaimed credit for the work, which was thereafter attributed to Gödel. Thus, he has been
known as the man who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic. Most people who haveheard the name ‘Gödel’ are like John; the claim that Gödel discovered the incompletenesstheorem is the only thing they have ever heard about Gödel.
(6)

When John uses the name ‘Gödel’, is he talking about:(A) the person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic? or(B) the person who got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for the work?
(Machery et al., 2004, B6, emphasis and example number added)

Machery et al. (2004) developed this and other vignettes in order to compare the judgments ofWesterners and East Asians concerning the reference of proper names. According to Machery etal., philosophers of language with a traditional bent believe that their inclinations to choose (6B)
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provide evidence for the ‘causal-historical view’ of the reference of proper names, and that, on
the flip side, choosing (6A) would have supported the opposing ‘descriptivist view’. Machery et
al. claim that, if the judgments of the traditional philosophers are not shared by East Asians, thetraditionalists would lose an important piece of evidence for the causal-historical view of names.
Furthermore, Machery et al. suggest, such a finding would by extension challenge the legitimacyof the use of judgments on which philosophers of language, arguably, have based their argumentsfor particular theses.3
The results reported in (Machery et al., 2004) indeed indicate that there is substantial variation
between Westerners and East Asians with respect to their judgments about the reference of proper
names. Whereas 56.5% of the American participants selected the (B)-type answers, only 31.5% of
the Hong Kong participants did so—a majority of the East Asian participants chose the answers
more compatible with the descriptivist view of names.4
One concern about this outcome raised by Lam (2010) is that this study exclusively used English to test the semantic judgments of the East Asian participants whose first language was likely
to be Cantonese. It is possible that the ways in which the native Cantonese speakers understood
the probes written in English were not exactly analogous to the ways in which the American participants understood them. Addressing this concern, Machery et al. (2010, 362) report that theysuccessfully replicated the original results using the Chinese translation of the Gödel probe cited
above. Likewise, in one of their studies, Sytsma et al. (2015, 220) also used the Japanese translation of the original Gödel probe and obtained the same discrepancy between Japanese and Westernparticipants.
These replication studies, however, fall short of providing support for the alleged cross-culturalvariation due to the noun phrase ambiguity. The inquisitive part of the Chinese translation em3

In this paper, we do not question the validity of Machery et al.’s reasoning here. Our focus is on the claim that
there is variation in semantic judgments between Westerners and East Asians, regardless of its implications. It has been
contended, however, that the traditional philosophers do not really rely on a methodological assumption that would
be undermined by such findings. See (Machery, 2012) for a formulation of the allegedly problematic practice, the‘method of cases’, and (Deutsch, 2015) for the argument that traditional philosophy is not dependent on the method,
as well as (Colaço and Machery, 2016) for a critical discussion of Deutsch’s argument.
4
Since the original work used a different scale, the percentage figures here are adapted from (Sytsma et al., 2015,
216).
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ployed by (Machery et al., 2010, 365) was formulated using ambiguous bare noun phrases. Sytsma et al.
(2015, 227) also presented to the participants a question in Japanese containing ambiguous barenoun phrases. The bare noun phrases used in these Chinese and Japanese probes look something
like the following:(7)

When John uses the name ‘Gödel’, is he talking about:(A) person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic? or(B) person who got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for the work?

We have seen in the previous section that bare noun phrases can have four types of interpretations, and that the predicate ‘John is talking about x’ in itself excludes none of them. From thesebasic characteristics of bare noun phrases, it immediately follows that, since the bare noun phrases
represented by (7A) and (7B) are ambiguous, at least not in the same way as the original definite
descriptions, (6A) and (6B), it would be unjustifiable to assume that the bare noun phrase translations of (6A) and (6B) generate the same effect as (6A) and (6B); since they are essentially different
types of expressions, if they are assumed to cause the same effects, a good reason must be provided,
but the previous research provides no such reason. Thus, it would be unjustifiable to assume thatthe probes given to the East Asian participants in (Machery et al., 2010) and (Sytsma et al., 2015)
ask the same questions as the probes given to the Western participants. Therefore, it becomes
dubious that the responses of the East Asian participants support the existence of cross-culturalvariation.
These authors might respond that, among the different types of interpretations available tothe bare noun phrase translations of (6A) and (6B), the participants zoned in on the single typeof interpretation that they intended. (6A) and (6B) were intended as anaphorically used singulardefinite descriptions, the functions of which are to point back to some entity that has been alreadyintroduced into discourse (Hawkins, 1978). That is, (6A) and (6B) were intended to designate
uniquely a particular individual who is described in the vignette, Schmidt and Gödel, respectively.
As long as the East Asian translations of (6A) and (6B) can have the intended interpretations,the overall vignette might provide enough contextual information that allowed the participants to
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eliminate the other irrelevant interpretations.
The vignette, however, fails to provide enough contextual information to eliminate all the unwanted readings. Besides the anaphoric, definite uses intended by the experimenters, the barenoun phrase translations of (6A) and (6B) can have what we might call the ‘indefinite narrow
scope’ interpretation. This interpretation is analogous to the narrow scope reading of (8), in which
the indefinite description a perpetual motion machine interacts with the verb phrase talk about interms of scope.
(8)

John is talking about a perpetual motion machine.

(8) has a narrow scope reading according to which the subject, John, is talking about something as
having the property of being a perpetual motion machine. Although there exist no such machines,
one can truly utter (8) with this narrow scope reading. For the speaker would be just reportingsome part of John’s speech, according to which there is a perpetual motion machine.
On the wide scope reading of (8), on the other hand, John does not have to be aware that theobject he is talking about is a perpetual motion machine: ‘there is a perpetual motion machine suchthat John is talking about it’. The crucial difference between the narrow and wide scope readingsof (8) for present purposes is that, in the former reading, the subject would have to have in mind
the property of being a perpetual motion machine.
The bare noun phrase translations of (6A) and (6B) have the indefinite narrow scope reading,analogous to the narrow scope reading of (8). This is fully expected given the basic characteristics
of bare noun phrases discussed in the previous section. A bare noun phrase can have an indefinite,
existential interpretation, playing the same role as an indefinite description in English, and thetranslation of talk about embeds a bare noun phrase in (7), just as talk about embeds an indefinite
description in (8).
In other words, the Japanese (or Chinese) probe question represented by (7) can be interpreted
as asking the following, where some-phrases are understood as taking narrow scope with respect
to talk about:(9)

When John uses the name ‘Gödel’, is he talking about:

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D EFINITE D ESCRIPTIONS AND THE A LLEGED E AST-W EST VARIATION(A) some person(s) who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic? or(B) some person(s) who got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for the work?
There is good reason to take (9A) to be the right answer. According to the vignette, John only
knows that there is a person called ‘Gödel’, who he thinks to have discovered the incompletenessof arithmetic; he has no knowledge of Gödel’s other deeds such as stealing Schmidt’s manuscript.
While using the name Gödel or any other expression for that matter, John can have in mind theproperty of being a person who discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic, but John is highly
unlikely to entertain any property that remotely resembles ‘being a person who got hold of themanuscript and claimed credit for the work’. It is irrelevant whether Gödel is a Millian name referring to Gödel or a description in disguise designating Schmidt. (9A) and (9B) are describing
John’s speech and his thinking behind it, and it seems wrong to choose (9B) and attribute to Johnany thought about someone who got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for the incompleteness theorem. Thus, there is reason for the East Asian participants to choose the (A) answer if (9)reflects their understandings of the probe question.
Besides the definite and indefinite interpretations, the bare noun phrase translations of (6A) and(6B) might also be compatible with the kind or species interpretation. The comparable English
question would be something like the following:(10) When John uses the name ‘Gödel’, is he talking about:(A) the kind of people who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic? or(B) the kind of people who got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for the work?
There is a sense in which John is indeed talking about a particular type or kind of people: people
who could discover the incompleteness of arithmetic. Again, (10A) would be the right answer
given the scenario, because the characteristics of the type of people stated by (10B) are unlikely
to come before his mind. Whether Gödel refers to Gödel or designates Schmidt is a completely
independent issue. Whatever meaning Gödel might have, (10A) is compatible with the scenario,
whereas (10B) is not. Thus, again, there is reason for the East Asian participants to choose the (A)answer over the (B) answer if (10) captures their understandings of the probe question.
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Overall, the bare noun phrases used in previous studies seem to have three different interpretations that are compatible with the vignette: the anaphoric singular definite, the indefinite narrow
scope, and the kind or species interpretation. It is difficult to tell whether the participants reallyentertained the third, kind or species interpretation during the experiments, but at the same time,
there is no theoretical reason to exclude it. We leave it open whether the participants entertained
the kind or species interpretation. We do not have to be committed to the availability of the kindor species interpretation of the bare noun phrases; the indefinite narrow scope interpretation sufficiently distinguishes them from the original definite descriptions in English. This difference showsthat the bare noun phrases used in previous studies are different types of expressions from theoriginal definite descriptions.
The original descriptions (6A) and (6B) are ambiguous in their own way due to their scope
properties.5 If they take scope over talk about, the subject, John, does not have to be aware that theobject he talks about satisfies the descriptive contents of (6A) and (6B). Since the vignette indicatesthat John is very unlikely to entertain the description (6B), the authors intended the wide scopeinterpretation. To put the point differently, the authors intended to use (6A) and (6B) anaphoricallyto refer to Schmidt and Gödel, regardless of whether John thinks of Schmidt or Gödel under any
particular description.
If (6A) and (6B) take narrow scope below talk about, John must be aware of the properties
stated by the descriptions. For example, (6A) under the narrow scope reading means that, according to John’s speech, there is exactly one person who discovered the incompleteness theorem. If
the authors intended this narrow scope interpretation, then they would be using (6A) and (6B) attributively, not referring to particular individuals.6 Notice that the narrow scope interpretation ofdefinite descriptions is similar to but different from the indefinite narrow scope interpretation ofbare noun phrases: the bare noun phrase translations of (6A) and (6B) have no uniqueness impli5

Or English definite descriptions only have apparent scope properties and are always interpreted in situ, but thesyntactically represented variables inside definite descriptions can create multiple readings (Elbourne, 2013). (6A) and(6B) are still predicted to be ambiguous on the non-quantificational, presuppositional account of definite descriptions.
6
Whether this ambiguity relates to the intra-culture variation reported by Machery and his colleagues is a question
we do not pursue here (recall that only roughly a half of the Western participants selected (B) answers in their original
study).
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cation, and they are compatible with more than one person who satisfies the descriptive content.
To summarize, the bare noun phrases in previous research, represented by (7A) and (7B) above,
are at least two-ways ambiguous, and possibly three-ways ambiguous: they are ambiguous between
the anaphoric singular definite interpretation and the indefinite narrow scope interpretation, or they
are ambiguous between the anaphoric singular definite interpretation, the indefinite narrow scopeinterpretation, and the kind or species interpretation. Either way, the English definite descriptions
used in the original study are not ambiguous in the same way (though they are ambiguous in adifferent way). Thus, it would be unjustifiable to assume that these definite descriptions and barenoun phrases gave the same questions to the Western and East Asian participants. Furthermore, thealleged ‘descriptivist’ (A) answer would be more compatible with the vignette when the bare nounphrases are assigned the indefinite narrow scope or the kind or species interpretation, regardless ofthe semantic content of Gödel.

4

Two Experiments with Japanese Definite Phrases

The main lesson to be drawn from the discussion thus far is that one must exercise caution whentranslating experimental probes originally written in English into a different language for the purposes of cross-cultural comparison. Accordingly, in order to determine whether Machery et al.’s(2004) original finding can be replicated using appropriately produced probes in an East Asian
language, we conducted two experiments on Japanese speakers that excluded simple bare nounphrases in translating the original question (6).7

4.1 Experiment 1
In the first experiment, we revised the bare noun phrases in previous research, represented by (7A)
and (7B), so that they would be more likely to have the interpretations that were originally in7

In one study, Lam (2010) also removed the noun phrase ambiguity by using proper names and found no significant
variation between Westerners and East Asians. The use of proper names in this study, however, was criticized by
Machery et al. (2010).
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tended by Machery et al. (2004). The definite descriptions in the original studies, (6A) and (6B),
are anaphorically used singular definite descriptions. That is, they uniquely designate Schmidt
and Gödel, who are introduced in the vignette. Two changes were made to Sytsma et al.’s (2015)
Japanese translations of (6A) and (6B) as an attempt to realize these anaphoric definite interpretations.
First, we used the so-called ‘intermediate’ demonstrative sono-phrases, definite phrases inJapanese, which have some characteristics in common with definite descriptions in English.8 Importantly, just as English definite descriptions (as well as complex demonstratives), sono-phrases
do not have an indefinite, existential interpretation, as is shown by the contrast between (11a) and(11b).
(11)

a. watasi-wa kamino nagai seito ni atta.
I-TOP
hair
long student DAT met.
“I met a/the/some student(s) with long hair.”b. watasi-wa sono kamino nagai seito ni atta.
I-TOP
sono hairlong student DAT met.
“I met the/that/those student(s) with long hair.”(11a) contains the bare phrase kamino nagai seito (literally, ‘hair long student’), and it is compatible with an indefinite, existential interpretation: ‘There is at least one student with long hairwhom I met’. This interpretation is not available to (11b), where the direct object is modified by
the sono-demonstrative.
Furthermore, just as English definite descriptions, sono-phrases have an anaphoric use: they
can be used to refer to what has been mentioned earlier (Hoji et al., 2003). A sono-phrase could
also refer to an unmentioned object that is salient in discourse, however. Accordingly, to ensurethat the participants seek an individual mentioned in the vignette, Gödel or Schmidt, we added
the predicate suggesting anaphoricity ‘appeared in the text’ to the previous Japanese translations
together with sono.9
8

In modern Japanese, there are three different types of demonstratives: the ko-, so-, and a- series. The proximate and distant demonstrative expressions ko- and a- roughly correspond to this and that, respectively, while theintermediate so- is often associated with the definite article the (Hoji et al., 2003).
9
In addition to an anaphoric reading, a sono-phrase has a deictic reading, just like English complex demonstratives.
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Japanese sono-phrases are, however, not semantically and pragmatically equivalent to English
singular definite descriptions (nor to singular complex demonstratives) for at least two reasons.
First, as the accompanying interpretation of (11b) indicates, sono is compatible with a plural interpretation of the noun. Second, sono-phrases have some kind of discourse-related requirementthat is not necessary for the use of English definite descriptions. According to one characterizationof the requirement, “the anaphoric so-series is used for referring to something that is not known
personally to either the speaker or the hearer or has not been a shared experience between them”(Kuno, 1973, 288). Thus, it must be noted that the first change does not ensure that the revised
phrases are semantically and pragmatically equivalent to the original definite descriptions.
The second change we made to the previous Japanese translations of (6A) and (6B) is to
add more content to the descriptions that would make the anaphoric definite interpretations more
prominent and the other interpretations less plausible. Drawing on (Machery et al. 2009; Sytsma
and Livengood, 2011) we added to the previous translations the predicates ‘being unknown to John’and ‘being widely believed to have discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic’, respectively, tohighlight the intended interpretations of them. It would be more difficult to interpret, for example,
the phrase corresponding to (7A) together with ‘being unknown to John’ to have the indefinite narrow scope interpretation, because that would imply that John’s speech describes his own ignoranceof the identity of the discoverer of the incompleteness theorem. Since John takes Gödel to have
proven the theorem and speaks as if he knows who discovered the theorem, his speech would not
explicitly state such ignorance.10
Putting these two changes together, the revised Japanese probe question asked in this experiment was the following (see Appendix for the entire probe):(12) (In Japanese) ‘When John uses the name ‘Gödel’, is he talking about’:(A) Bunchu-ni detekita, John-ga siranai, sanjutuno fukanzensei-ohontonitext-inappeared, John-NOM know.not, arithmetic incompleteness-ACC reallyIn the current experimental settings, however, there is no demonstration by a speaker, and so a deictic interpretation
can be easily excluded.
10
See (Sytsma and Livengood, 2011, 321) for different ways of characterizing the roles of these added predicates.
As with Sytsma and Livengood, we do not try to distinguish these different ways experimentally here.
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hakkensita sono jinbutu
discovered the person“the person who (appeared in the text but unknown to John) really discovered theincompleteness of arithmetic”(B) Bunchu-ni detekita, sanjutuno fukanzensei-ohakkensita jinbutu to hiroku
text-inappeared, arithmetic incompleteness-ACC discovered person as widely
sinjirareteiru ga, jissaiwa syukou-oteniire kouseki-o jibunnomononisita
believedbut, actually manuscript-ACC obtained credit-ACC self.claimed
sono jinbutu
the person“the person who is widely believed to have discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic, but actually got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for it”
To compare this revised question (12) and the question used in (Sytsma et al., 2015) that contains bare noun phrases, we conducted a randomized controlled trial in which these two questions
were randomly assigned to a group of participants recruited at a Japanese university (N=211; allJapanese speakers with native fluency; age range: 20–25; 32 female, 168 male, and 21 unanswered). Each participant was presented with the same Japanese translation of Machery et al.’s(2004) Gödel vignette, which was followed by either one of the two questions. To avoid any ordereffect, the answer options were also randomized.
The results of this experiment show that there is a significant difference between these twoquestions with and without bare noun phrases (Fig.1). First, 30.6% (N=111) of the participantsin the original, bare noun phrase condition selected the ‘causal-historical’ (B) answer. This wasvery much in line with Sytsma et al.’s (2015) report, in which only 29.9% (N = 67 out of 221
participants) of the Japanese participants gave a causal-historical response. Second, 50% (N =110) of the ‘without bare noun phrase’ condition selected the (B) answer. This difference in the
proportions of giving (B) responses between the two randomly selected groups was contingent on
the phrasings of the questions provided.11
To repeat the figures of the original study in (Machery et al., 2004), 56.5% of the American par11

The 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of (B) answers for each condition are: With Bare Noun Phrase(0.403, 0.596) and Without Bare Noun Phrase (0.227, 0.406). That is, these two intervals do not substantially overlap
with each other, indicating that the revised question created the difference.
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Figure 1: Results of Experiment 1 [to be added]
ticipants selected the analogous (B) answer, as opposed to 31.5% of the Hong Kong participants.
Thus, the proportion of the Japanese participants in the current study who gave a causal-historicalresponse is in line with the proportion of the American participants who gave a causal-historicalresponse in the original study. In other words, the results of (Machery et al., 2004) were not replicated when a Japanese probe was carefully constructed to target at the intended interpretations of
the original definite descriptions.

4.2 Experiment 2
Experiment 1 shows that Japanese speakers respond to Kripke’s Gödel vignette in a similar fashion to English speakers if the probe question is constructed less ambiguously. It does not show,
however, which of the two changes we made to the previous Japanese translations of (6A) and(6B) generated the observed effect. Experiment 2 was designed to understand further the functionsof the two changes by decomposing them into five different conditions, where the base bare nounphrases were modified to a varying degree: (i) no extra modification was added (i.e., the ‘with barenoun phrase’ condition in Experiment 1), (ii) sono-demonstratives alone were added, (iii) sonodemonstratives and the anaphoric predicate ‘appeared in the text’ were added, (iv) the clarifying
predicates (e.g., ‘unknown to John’) alone were added, (v) all of these phrases were added (i.e., the‘without bare noun phrase’ condition in Experiment 1). To illustrate, the following schematically
represents the (A) answer in each condition:(13) (i) With Bare Noun: ‘person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic’(ii) Sono Alone: ‘the person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic’(iii) Sono+Anaphoric: ‘the person (who appeared in the text) really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic’(iv) Clarifying: ‘person (unknown to John) really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic’
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D EFINITE D ESCRIPTIONS AND THE A LLEGED E AST-W EST VARIATION(v) Without Bare Noun: ‘the person (who appeared in the text but unknown to John) really
discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic’
We conducted another randomized controlled trial with these five question probes in exactly
the same way as Experiment 1 (N=1062; all Japanese speakers at the same university with native
fluency; age range: 18–65; age average 18.4; 254 female, 764 male, and 44 unanswered). The
participants of Experiment 2 were recruited from different departments than Experiment 1 (also ina different academic year), and they were asked if they took Experiment 1; so it is very unlikelythat there was an overlap between the participants of Experiments 1 and 2. The results are statedin the following: Figure 2 represents the proportion of (B) answers for each condition, and Table 1
shows the Fisher’s Exact Test p-values for all combinations of the conditions.12
Figure 2: Results of Experiment 2 [to be added]

Table 1: Fisher’s Exact Test p-values for all combinations of (i–v)(ii) Sono Alone (iii) Sono+Anaphoric (iv) Clarifying(i) With BN
1
0.16662.427e-07(ii) Sono Alone
0.13881.623e-07
0.0002334(iii) Sono+Anaphoric(iv) Clarifying(v) Without BN
0.0002879
0.0002879
0.03290.1407

There are four points to be made concerning the data obtained. First, as expected, the resultsof Experiment 1 were replicated with this large number of participants: only 37% (N=210) of theparticipants who were randomly assigned to (i), the unmodified bare noun phrase condition, chosethe (B) answer, whereas 55% (N=211) of those assigned to (v), the clarified sono-phrases, chosethe (B) answer.
Second, adding the clarifying predicates alone made the responses of the participants morein line with the ‘causal-historical’ view than any other conditions—62% (N=215) chose the (B)12

The values were computed using R ver. 3.2.5. The 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of (B) answers
for each condition are: (i) (0.281, 0.468), (ii) (0.272, 0.458), (iii) (0.346, 0.538), (iv) (0.522, 0.709), and (v) (0.452,
0.644). We also summarize the results of χ2 test of independence as follows: (i vs ii: χ2 = 0, df = 1, p = 1); (i vsiii: χ2 = 1.9149, df = 1, p = 0.1664); (i vs iv: χ2 = 25.977, df = 1, p = 3.454e − 07); (i vs v: χ2 = 12.787, df =1, p = 0.000349); (ii vs iii: χ2 = 2.0244, df = 1, p = 0.1548); (ii vs iv: χ2 = 26.411, df = 1, p = 2.759e − 07);(ii vs v: χ2 = 13.082, df = 1, p = 0.0002981); (iii vs iv: χ2 = 13.475, df = 1, p = 0.0002418); (iii vs v:
χ2 = 4.5311, df = 1, p = 0.03328); (iv vs v: χ2 = 2.0774, df = 1, p = 0.1495).
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answer. Although this outcome was unexpected, it is diametrically opposed to one of the results
reported in (Sytsma et al. 2015), where Sytsma and colleagues used a Japanese probe similar to (iv)and found that 41.2% (N=51) of the participants selected (B) as their answers. The proportion of(B) answers we obtained is more analogous to their outcome concerning English speakers (68.5%,
N=143).
Given this sharp contrast, Sytsma et al.’s Japanese probe question deserves closer scrutiny. Let
us compare the Japanese phrases they used and those in our condition (iv). Consider the (A) choice,which is reproduced here as (14b), together with Sytsma et al.’s English original (14a).
(14)a. the person who (unbeknownst to John) really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic
b. sanjutuno fukanzensei-ohontoni hakkensita jinbutu (John-wa kono-koto-oarithmetic incompleteness-ACC really discovered person (John-TOP this-thing-ACC
siranai)know.not)“person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic (John doesn’t knowthis)”(Sytsma et al. 2015, 228)

Notice that (14b) is not quite structurally equivalent to the English description (14a). The predicate
unbeknownst to John is embedded inside the definite description in (14a). Given the scenario,(14a) indicates that John does not know that the designated person discovered the theorem. On theother hand, the Japanese counterpart (14b) includes an independent clause in parentheses, whichasserts that John does not know the proposition expressed by the newly introduced demonstrative
phrase kono koto (‘this thing’). What does this phrase mean? Since the preceding noun is jinbutu(‘person’), and a person cannot be referred to using koto (‘thing’), the clause in the parentheses
cannot simply mean ‘John doesn’t know the real discoverer of the incompleteness theorem’. It
must refer to some or other proposition.
There are at least two possible interpretations of kono koto (‘this thing’) in this context. The
first possible interpretation is that it refers to the proposition that the true discoverer of the theorem
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D EFINITE D ESCRIPTIONS AND THE A LLEGED E AST-W EST VARIATION(someone other than Gödel) discovered the theorem. This interpretation would make (14a) and(14b) a matching pair: John thinks that Gödel proved the theorem but fails to know that somebody
else did it—this appears to be what is intended by adding unbeknownst to John in (14a). If ‘thisthing’ is interpreted in this way, then (14a) and (14b) would be analogous. This interpretation of(14b) is, however, hard to access because the participants would have to construct it on their own
by analyzing the preceding noun phrase.13
The second, possibly more accessible interpretation of ‘this thing’ is that it simply refers to
the proposition expressed by the entire sentential clause including the main question: ‘When John
uses the name ‘Gödel’, is he talking about . . . ’. The choice (14b) and the preceding question
together form the sentence ‘When John uses the name ‘Gödel’, he is talking about person who
really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic’, and this is what John does not know. That is,
he fails to be aware of whom he is talking about. Whether (14b) supports the descriptivist or thecausal-historical view of names, this interpretation makes the comparison between (14a) and (14b)inappropriate due to the lack of the analogous reading of (14a).
In contrast to Sytsma et al.’s (14b), the clarifying predicate we added, John-ga siranai (‘whom
John doesn’t know’ or ‘being unknown to John’) in (12) above, is embedded inside the bare nounphrase. The implication is that John does not know that the person in question discovered thetheorem, and it reflects the intended meaning of (14a) more accurately than (14b) does.
Third, we found no evidence that the sono-demonstrative alone could make a difference fromthe basic bare noun phrases (ii, 36%, N=211). When the anaphoric predicate ‘appeared in the text’
was added to sono, however, the number of (B) answers was slightly higher (iii, 44%, N=215). The
cause of this increase cannot be decisively attributed to the anaphoric predicate, however (p=0.1666
for i vs iii; p=0.1388 for ii vs iii).
Fourth, putting the two changes together (iii+iv=v) increased the number of (B) answers to alesser extent than just adding the clarifying predicates (iv). Since the p-value for conditions (iv) and(v) is less than 0.05 (p=0.1407), however, the current study fails to show that there is a significant
13

Doing the same thing with the accompanying English translation of (14b) ‘person who really discovered theincompleteness of arithmetic (John doesn’t know this)’ seems also difficult.
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difference between these conditions.
Although it is difficult to interpret results with no significance, the lack of significant difference between (iv=62%) and (v=55%) betrayed our prediction that (v), being more comparable to
the English probe question than (iv), would attract a higher proportion of the ‘causal-historical’responses. One possible interpretation of the data is that 62% overestimates the true percentageof (iv) and the true proportion turns out to be somewhere around 55%.14 If this were the case,then one might take our study to fail to deny that there is cross-cultural variation.15 One mighteven contend that there is evidence for cross-cultural variation: Sytsma et al. (2015) examined theEnglish counterpart of (iv) and found the 68.5% of native English speakers selected the (B) answer(their “Clarified narrator” case).
This objection presupposes that the Japanese and the English results are directly comparable.
The proportional difference between the true percentage of (iv) and Sytsma et al.’s English results
would not necessarily show the existence of cross-cultural variation precisely for the same reason
that the difference reported in the Machery et al.’s (2004) original experiment does not show it.
The Japanese phrase in condition (iv) is a bare noun phrase that is not analogous to the English
description (14a). As we have discussed in section 4.1, the added predicates were expected tomake the irrelevant but possible interpretations less plausible. Nevertheless, it is still possible thatthe added predicates did not exclude all the other interpretations due to the noun phrase ambiguity.
Even if the true proportion of (B) answers in (iv) is close to 55%, by showing there to be a significant difference between (i) and (iv) (as well as between (i) and (v)), we have established that barenoun phrases are ambiguous, and they can be made less ambiguous with clarification. There is no
guarantee that the English probe containing definite descriptions and the Japanese translation of it
containing bare noun phrases were interpreted in the exactly same way.16
According to the data, it is possible that the sono-demonstrative and the anaphoric predicate
14

Another possibility is that 55% underestimates the B answers in (v). This may not be very plausible, however,
because the same condition in Experiment 1 shows a similar proportion (50%).
15
We thank an anonymous reviewer for alerting us to this possibility.
16
Of course, we by no means claim that no studies will be able to show the existence of cross-cultural variation.
Our main message is that the extant research suffers from the noun phrase ambiguity.
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did nothing to disambiguate bare noun phrases in conditions (ii), (iii), and (v). Our theoreticalprediction that they would play some role in doing so is not supported by the data. This findingshows that more work is needed to understand the similarities and differences between Japanesedemonstratives and English definite phrases.
With this future objective in mind, let us briefly discuss the possibility that there is a genuine
difference in the participants’ responses to (iv) and (v). One reason to consider this possibility
non-negligible is that the revised Japanese noun phrases in (v) are very long and difficult to parse.
The phrases in (12) are not the most natural choice of words if a user of them merely wants torefer back to Schmidt or Gödel. The participants could have been confused by the unwieldy way
of saying something simple. These considerations might suggest that we need to devise a lessdemanding probe in testing one’s judgments about demonstrative phrases.
To conclude, the outcomes of Experiment 2 are consistent with those of Experiment 1. The
original English definite descriptions were intended to have the singular anaphoric interpretation,
whereas the Japanese bare noun phrases in previous research were compatible with several different
interpretations that were not shared by the original descriptions. In particular, the bare phrases havethe indefinite narrow scope interpretation, which might have encouraged (A) answers. To exclude
the indefinite narrow scope interpretation of Japanese bare noun phrases, Experiment 1 introduced
two changes: the sono-demonstrative plus the anaphoric predicate and the predicates that clarify
the intended readings. Experiment 2 shows that the second change contributed to the increased
numbers of (B) answers (conditions iv and v). Nonetheless, some of the results of Experiment 2
were unexpected and require further studies to state precisely the relations between the conditions.
Thus, the current study is very much in line with the spirit of experimental philosophy; having an
objection to an experimental claim is “far from undermining our call for an experimental turn inthe philosophy of language . . . it call for more and more subtle experiments” (Machery and Stich,
2012, 507).

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5

Concluding Remarks

In this paper, we have examined a previously overlooked confound in experimental studies on thesemantic judgments of Western and East Asian individuals. Some of the previous research crucially rely on the assumption that bare noun phrases in Chinese or Japanese are strictly analogous
to definite descriptions in English. Since bare noun phrases in Chinese and Japanese are generally
ambiguous (‘noun phrase ambiguity’), this assumption does not generally hold; there is no guarantee that the East Asian participants interpreted the bare noun phrases given to them as definite
phrases equivalent to the English definite descriptions that were originally used in (Machery et al.,2004). We have also reported two experiments on native Japanese speakers that examined the nounphrase ambiguity. The results of the experiments suggest that the semantic judgments of Japanese
speakers concerning proper names may not diverge from those of English speakers.
The results of our experiments are incompatible with Machery et al.’s (2004) claim that East
Asians tend to have descriptivist inclinations. We failed to replicate the data obtained by Machery et al.
(2004, 2010, 2015) and Sytsma et al. (2015) when the probe was carefully calibrated to reflect thesemantic and pragmatic features of the original English definite descriptions.17
The results are, on the other hand, in support of Lam’s (2010, 327) suggestion that “perhaps
cross-cultural . . . variations in answers to certain questions do not reveal genuine differences insemantic judgments, but rather differences in linguistic competence, or differences in abilities tounderstand precisely formulated questions.” The confound of the noun phrase ambiguity and ourexperiments reported above point toward a different interpretation of the original study. It might
be the case that the Hong Kong University students and the American peers who participatedin the original study exhibited a slightly different way of understanding the subtle semantic andpragmatic features of the definite article the. The outcome is perhaps not surprising given that Hong
Kong English has been observed to have different properties from standard British and American

17

At the same time, the current study can be seen as replicating the intra-cultural results that speakers of one and thesame language have differing semantic judgments; for example, the disambiguated condition in Experiment 1 obtained
a 50-50 split.
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English.18
An implication for experimental design to be drawn from the preceding discussion is that it is
not easy to guarantee that a probe written in one language gives rise to the same interpretation as aprobe written in another language. Future research should incorporate elements that minimize theeffects of idiosyncratic features of particular languages.19

Appendix: Japanese Probes
Experiment 1
The Japanese translation of the Gödel vignette
ジョンという人物がいるとしよう。ジョンは大学で、ゲーデルは算術の不完全性という重要な数学の定理を証明した人物である、と教わった。ジョンは数学がとても得意で、不完全性定理についてその正確な内容を述べることができる。ジョンはこの定理の発見者はゲーデルだと思っているが、彼がゲーデルについて聞いたことがあるのはこれだけだった。ここで、ゲーデルはこの定理の考案者ではなかった、と想定してみよう。実は、「シュミット」と呼ばれる男が（その遺体はウィーンにおいて何十年も前に不可解な状況で発見された）その功績を成し遂げたのだった。シュミットの友人であったゲーデルは、何らかの手段をもちいてシュミットの手稿を手に入れ、その功績を自分のものにしたのである。以来、その功績はゲーデルのものとされている。 こうして、彼は算術の不完全性を証明した人物として知られることとなった。「ゲーデル」という名前を聞いたことのある人のほとんどはジョンと同じである。つまり、ゲーデルについて聞いたことがあるのは、ゲーデルは不完全性定理を発見した、という主張だけである。
以上の話が本当だとして、「ゲーデル」という名前を使うとき、ジョンが話しているのは
以下のどちらの人物でしょうか?

With Bare Noun Phrase Condition18

See (Sung, 2015) and the sources cited there.
Possibly, non-linguistically designed probes such as visual storytelling is preferable over linguistically encoded
stimuli.
19

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D EFINITE D ESCRIPTIONS AND THE A LLEGED E AST-W EST VARIATION(A) 算術の不完全性を本当に発見した人物(B) 手稿を手に入れ功績を自分のものにした人物
Without Bare Noun Phrase Condition(A) 文中に出てきた、ジョンが知らない、算術の不完全性を本当に発見したその人物(B) 文中に出てきた、算術の不完全性を発見した人物と広く信じられているが、実際は手稿を手に入れ功績を自分のものにしたその人物

Experiment 2
Condition (ii)20(A) 算術の不完全性を本当に発見したその人物(B) 原稿を手に入れ功績を自分のものにしたその人物
Condition (iii)(A) 文中に出てきた、算術の不完全性を本当に発見したその人物(B) 文中に出てきた、原稿を手に入れ功績を自分のものにしたその人物
Condition (iv)(A) ジョンが知らない、算術の不完全性を本当に発見した人物(B) 算術の不完全性を発見した人物と広く信じられているが、実際は原稿を手に入れ功績を自分のものにした人物

20

Condition (i) = With Bare Noun Phrase; (v) = Without Bare Noun Phrase in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, we
replaced the word for “manuscript” (手稿) in Experiment 1 with a synonymous but more common expression (原稿)both in the vignette and the questions.
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