Arizona State University ABSTRACT: I investigate the phenomenon of “de jure” coreference (a pervasive and important feature of natural language closely connected to anaphora). I argue that in order to fully explain this notion, we must posit a relation that must be taken as a primitive from the perspective of a theory of meaning: we cannot fully understand the notion in terms of familiar concepts. I introduce four axioms that give the primitive relation content and allow easy incorporation in traditional semantic theories.