Yes, the quote ('some progress in working out the meaning of the word "the"') was a reference to Russell's theory of descriptions. I already knew that, though I suppose I didn't make that explicit. I was looking for the source of the quote itself.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I read that quote in a comic book. Well, "graphic novel", actually. Logicomix. I'll be able to check that suspicion at the library within a few days. Edit: Nope. Wasn't there.
My reason for wanting to nail down the quote is that I intend to make a blog posting in which I argue that Russell's theory of descriptions is a mistake. That if John is unmarried, then the sentence "John's wife has red hair" is meaningless, rather than false as Russell would have it.
A bit disheartening, that, but I'm not sure the philosophers did much better back when they were working on the meaning of life.
My memory of this, which I picked up studying linguistics (though I don't know where it originated), is that statements have a set of presuppositions, which the speaker asserts to be true and noncontroversial by using them, and then additionally have a truth value for the main proposition only if the presuppositions all hold. There's a presupposition for every noun phrase introduced with "the" that an appropriate referent exists; and presuppositions may also be introduced in a variety of other ways, such as by embedding statements in certain way...
I need some help tracking down a quotation. I'm pretty sure that it was an early 20th century philosopher - perhaps Russell. He was explaining that modern philosophy no longer tries to find the meaning of life. Post-Witgenstein, it has narrowed its ambitions and now seeks only to discover the meaning of words. He goes on to explain why even this is likely to prove difficult. And then (here is the part I like) he wryly comments that in spite of the difficulties, there has been some progress in working out the meaning of the word "the".
Does that ring a bell for anyone?