Editing Sense and reference (section)

==Background==
Frege developed his original theory of meaning in early works like ''[[Begriffsschrift]]'' (concept paper) of 1879 and ''[[The Foundations of Arithmetic|Grundlagen]]'' (Foundations of Arithmetic) of 1884. On this theory, the meaning of a complete sentence consists in its being true or false,<ref>Gareth Evans, ''The Varieties of Reference'', Oxford: Clarendon 1982, p. 8</ref> and the meaning of each significant expression in the sentence is an extralinguistic entity which Frege called its ''Bedeutung'', literally meaning or significance, but rendered by Frege's translators as reference, referent, 'Meaning', nominatum, etc. Frege supposed that some parts of speech are complete by themselves, and are analogous to the [[Argument of a function|arguments]] of a [[Function (mathematics)|mathematical function]], but that other parts are incomplete, and contain an empty place, by analogy with the function itself.<ref>"Function and Concept", p. 16.</ref> Thus "Caesar conquered Gaul" divides into the complete term "Caesar", whose reference is Caesar himself, and the incomplete term "—conquered Gaul", whose reference is a concept. Only when the empty place is filled by a proper name does the reference of the completed sentence – its truth value – appear. This early theory of meaning explains how the significance or reference of a sentence (its truth value) depends on the significance or reference of its parts.