Conversationally Relevant Descriptions

Conversationally relevant descriptions are definite descriptions that are not merely tools for the identification of a referent, but are also crucial to the discourse in other respects. I analyse the uses of such descriptions in assertions as conveying a particular type of conversational implicatures. Such implicatures can be represented within the framework of possible world semantics. The analysis is extended to non-assertive illocutionary acts on the one hand, and to indefinite descriptions on the other.