Donnellan On Attribution And Reference Idiolects

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“whoever or whatever is the so-and-so”, whereas a speaker using a definite description referentially enables his audience to choose or decide whom or whatever he is talking about and asserts something in lieu of that person or thing.
...To assert something about whatever or whoever fits that description; but in the referential use the definite description is merely one tool for doing a certain job-calling attention to a person or thing- and in general any other device for doing the same job, another description or a name, would do as well.”
In illustrating this distinction, Donnellan considers a single sentence for his example, “Smiths murderer is insane”. In this, there are two points to illustrate; the first pointing out the description, which is referential, and the second is truth of its state of affairs, that is attributive. To begin analyzing this sentence, the first thing we must do is assert that there is a murderer. “In sane”, asserts that there is another person who ...

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