How do a professor of philosophy from Stanford and Riverside universities in California and a senior lecturer from the University of the Basque Country at Donostia (San Sebastian) end up writing a book on the pragmatics of reference together?

The connection between Stanford and Donostia started through an encounter of two members of, at the moment, a tiny set of people: the set of Basque (including Basque-American) logicians. In the 1980s, Jesus Mari Larrazabal and John Etchemendy met at a logic colloquium in England and a friendship was born; a friendship that caused an interesting exchange: various logicians and philosophers – mostly young researchers during their PhD studies, including Korta – had the opportunity to visit the philosophy department and the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at Stanford during the 1990s. Several logicians, computer scientists, psychologists, and philosophers – including Perry – took part in workshops and conferences in Donostia in more or less the same period. The research atmosphere of Stanford and, especially, the interdisciplinary approach of CSLI inspired the most determined people in Donostia to create the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI). In 2002, proposed by the Institute, the University of the Basque Country conferred on Perry the honorary degree of Doctor Honoris Causa.

In 2001, CSLI had not much space available, so Perry was kind enough that summer to share his office with Korta, who at the time was working on the semantics/pragmatics divide and the pragmatically determined elements of what is said – along with some boring stuff for a promotion that never happened.