Russell (1961: 785):
Suppose I say, 'The golden mountain does not exist', and suppose you ask 'What is it that doesn't exist?' It would seem to me that, if I say 'It is the golden mountain,' I am attributing some sort of existence to it. … The theory of descriptions was designed to meet this and other difficulties.
Blogger Comment:
From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, Russell's reply does not attribute existence to 'the golden mountain'. Instead, it identifies 'the golden mountain' with that which does not exist. (The question seeks an encoding, and the answer provides it.)
what
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is
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it [[that doesn’t exist]]
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Identifier Token
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Process: relational
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Identified Value
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it [[that doesn’t exist]]
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is
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the golden mountain
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Identified Value
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Process: relational
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Identifier Token
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