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Full Idea
A large range of expressions can be used with referential intentions, including quantifier phrases (as in 'someone has once again failed to close the door properly').
Gist of Idea
Even a quantifier like 'someone' can be used referentially
Source
Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.5)
Book Ref
'Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language', ed/tr. Lepore,E/Smith,B [OUP 2008], p.413
A Reaction
This is the pragmatic aspect of reference, where it can be achieved by all sorts of means. But are quantifiers inherently referential in their semantic function? Some of each, it seems.
| 4972 | I may regard a thought about Phosphorus as true, and the same thought about Hesperus as false [Frege] |
| 4570 | Russell assumes that expressions refer, but actually speakers refer by using expressions [Cooper,DE on Russell] |
| 8355 | Expressions don't refer; people use expressions to refer [Strawson,P] |
| 8357 | If an utterance fails to refer then it is a pseudo-use, though a speaker may think they assert something [Strawson,P] |
| 5815 | Whether a definite description is referential or attributive depends on the speaker's intention [Donnellan] |
| 10459 | Context does not create reference; it is just something speakers can exploit [Bach] |
| 10460 | 'That duck' may not refer to the most obvious one in the group [Bach] |
| 10461 | What a pronoun like 'he' refers back to is usually a matter of speaker's intentions [Bach] |
| 10462 | Information comes from knowing who is speaking, not just from interpretation of the utterance [Bach] |
| 10434 | Even a quantifier like 'someone' can be used referentially [Sainsbury] |
| 15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
| 21650 | No language is semantically referential; it all occurs at the level of thought or utterance [Pietroski, by Hofweber] |