Kerouac aficionados will recall the "Old God Shearing" passage in On the Road devoted to the late pianist George Shearing. Here is a taste of his playing. And another.
You will have noticed, astute reader that you are, that my opening sentence is ambiguous. 'The late pianist George Shearing' must be read de re for the sentence to be true, while my formulation suggests a de dicto reading. Compare:
a. The late George Shearing is such that that there is a passage in OTR about him.
b. There is a passage in OTR about the late George Shearing.
(a) is plainly true and wholly unproblematic. (b), however, is false in that there is no passage in OTR about George Shearing under the description 'late' or 'deceased.' On the contrary, the passage in question depicts him as so exuberantly alive as to drive Dean Moriarty 'mad.' But is (b) plainly false?
I suppose it depends on whether 'about' is ambiguous in (b). Can a passage that depicts x as F be about x even if x is not F? Or must x be F if a passage that depicts x as F is correctly describable as about x? My tentative view is that there are both uses in ordinary English. Consequently, (b) is not plainly false.
Is the definite description 'the man in the corner with champagne in his glass' about a man in the corner even if he does not have champagne in his glass but sparkling water instead? If you say 'yes,' then you should agree that (b) is not plainly false, but ambiguous.
