Almost all contemporary analyses of the focus on the referential identifiability (RI) of singular, object-denoting phrases  (Christopherson 1939; Hawkins 1978; Heim 1982; Birner and Ward 1994; Abbott 1999; Roberts 2003; etc.).   Most posit uniqueness,  familiarity, or salience as presupposed/implicated characteristics of the referent, concepts such as domain restriction and accommodation accounting for incomplete description, novel definites, etc.    Such an approach does not easily accommodate non-RI the-phrases, e.g., weak (take the bus) (Carlson et al. 2005, 2006, etc.; Beysaade et al.2013; Aguilar et al. 2014; etc.,),  good-enough (buy the house next door), role-related (ring for the nurse), iconic (has the trophy wife), and attributive nonspecific (the evangelical Trump voter).

 

               This talk proposes a procedural  account of the which incorporates the often-noted assumed sufficiency of lexical content but is underspecified with respect to final interpretation:

 

 (A) a speaker guarantee of the informational sufficiency of the lexical content for listener processing (GSI) defines the basic contribution of the to its phrase and (B) the guarantee of sufficient lexical content highlights the relevance of the lexical content for processing.

 

GSI focuses on the encoding, rather than interpretation, of the-phrases, incorporating the elements of speaker act (shared with its relative that), sufficiency of lexical content, and relevance considerations

(Powell 1997; Bezuidenhout 1997, 2004, 2013; von Heusinger 2002; etc.). 

 

               However, it stops short of a direct link to referential or cognitive status, instead positing a property-related/predicative level of representation subject to analysis/interpretation (referential, predicative, attributive, etc.) within sentence-level argument structure, the context of particular utterances, etc.. Variation in distribution/interpretation stems from the interaction of content with referential intent (Bach 2004, etc.) and the guarantee of informational sufficiency.   For semantic definites (the king of Thailand),  lexical singularity (one king per country) and recognition of speaker's intent to refer specifically can trigger an RI interpretation (but also a predicative reading)   For context-dependent expressions (go feed the cat), an RI  interpretation follows through inferencing of speaker intent and consequent inferencing as to retrieveablity in context (Roberts 2010).  However, for nonspecific attributives (the evangelical Trump voter, the student with a hangover) and weak/good-enough phrases (take the bus, the house next door), a non-RI interpretation is sufficient.  And, crucially, conversationally-relevant the-phrases are licensed by the sufficiency-relevance link: e.g.,anaphoric epithets (Joe left and the idiot forgot his suitcase), iconic (go ahead - buy the fancy car), and over-informative (avoid the newly-painted table) (Krahmer et al. 2011; Davies et al. 2016, Degen 2017)

 

               The-expressions which contain insufficient information in context will lead to infelicity.  There are few instances  (he's that/#the type of guy) where such insufficiency can be determined independent of context.  Within context, most obviously, novel specific the-phrases, except in novels, are often infelicitous (out-of-the-blue #the child stole the money).  Similarly, a novel non-RI phrase (the bridesmaid), while felicitous in relevant contexts (terrible wedding – the groom made out with the bridesmaid!), will not be felicitous in other less-relevant contexts (interesting wedding - #the bridesmaid is a doctor).