Post #986218

The statement "the model was wearing an expensive dress" has an opaque reading, where the speaker is assumed to know nothing more about the dress. It also has a transparent reading, where the speaker is assumed to have a particular dress in mind. There's also a middle case where the speaker knows that the model tried on several expensive dresses, but doesn't know which one they were wearing at that moment. It's a restriction of the set of possibilities. https://people.umass.edu/partee/MGU_Web_13/materials/Handout-Kusliy_1up.pdf