Donnellan contributed to the philosophy of language, notably to the analysis of proper names and definite descriptions.
Descriptivism holds that ordinary proper names (e.g., 'Socrates', 'Richard Feynman', and 'Madagascar') may be paraphrased by definite descriptions (e.g., 'Plato's favorite philosopher', 'the man who devised the theory of quantum electrodynamics', and 'the largest island off the southeastern coast of Africa').
[7] Kripke's alternative view was, by his own account, not fully developed in his lectures.
[6] Donnellan's work on proper names is among the earliest and most influential developments of the causal-historical theory of reference.
The referential use, on the other hand, functions to pick out who or what a speaker is talking about, so that something can be said about that person or thing.