This chapter provides an analysis of complex demonstratives, constructed from a demonstrative and a nominal, such as ‘that man’ or ‘that politician’. It considers five views about the semantic role of complex demonstratives that fall into two camps. The first camp takes them to be referring terms but includes four views of the role of the nominal: (1) it contributes to the truth conditions of the containing sentence but not to constrain the referent; (2) it constrains the referent of the complex demonstrative but contributes nothing to the truth conditions; (3) it constrains the referent and contributes to the truth conditions; and (4) it neither helps fix the referent or contributes to truth conditions. The second camp treats complex demonstratives as pure quantifiers. The chapter argues all these views are wrong but both have hold of elements of the truth, and offers an analysis of complex demonstratives on which ‘that F’ is equivalent to ‘the F identical to that’.
Keywords: complex demonstratives, semantic role, truth conditions, referent, quantifiers