 A close study of the syntax and semantics of natural language suggests that constructions of the form ‘the F’ and ‘an F’ are not only rare in natural languages, but potentially misleading in languages like English. These expressions really don’t carry out the logical roles that Russell and subsequent authors have thought. However, Russell’s core insight remains intact: The critical question is whether the sentences in which they appear are quantificational or referential, and Russell may well be right about the critical cases here. That is, many apparently referential constructions may in fact be quantificational. What Russell didn’t see was that surface grammar is more deceptive than even he realized. Elements like ‘the’ and ‘a’ do not directly encode quantifiers or uniqueness clauses. The task for philosophers of language now is the thorny task of figuring out what information they do encode.