This book pursues the question of how and whether natural language allows for reference to abstract objects in a fully systematic way. By making full use of contemporary linguistic semantics, it presents a much greater range of linguistic generalizations than has previously been taken into consideration in philosophical discussions, and it argues for an ontological picture is very different from that generally taken for granted by philosophers and semanticists alike. Reference to abstract objects such as properties, numbers, propositions, and degrees (...) is considerably more marginal than generally held. (shrink)

A common view is that natural language treats numbers as abstract objects, with expressions like the number of planets, eight, as well as the number eight acting as referential terms referring to numbers. In this paper I will argue that this view about reference to numbers in natural language is fundamentally mistaken. A more thorough look at natural language reveals a very different view of the ontological status of natural numbers. On this view, numbers are not primarily treated abstract objects, (...) but rather 'aspects' of pluralities of ordinary objects, namely number tropes, a view that in fact appears to have been the Aristotelian view of numbers. Natural language moreover provides support for another view of the ontological status of numbers, on which natural numbers do not act as entities, but rather have the status of plural properties, the meaning of numerals when acting like adjectives. This view matches contemporary approaches in the philosophy of mathematics of what Dummett called the Adjectival Strategy, the view on which number terms in arithmetical sentences are not terms referring to numbers, but rather make contributions to generalizations about ordinary (and possible) objects. It is only with complex expressions somewhat at the periphery of language such as the number eight that reference to pure numbers is permitted. (shrink)

This book present a unified semantic theory of expressions involving the notions of part and whole. It develops a theory of part structures which differs from traditional (extensional) mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions. The book presents a great range of empirical generalizations involving plurals, mass nouns, adnominal and adverbial modifiers such as 'whole', (...) 'together', and 'alone', nominal and adverbial quanitfiers ranging over parts, and expressions of completion such as 'completely' and 'partly'. (shrink)

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the (...) topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns (furniture, police force, clothing). (shrink)

The aim of natural language ontology is to uncover the ontological categories and structures that are implicit in the use of natural language, that is, that a speaker accepts when using a language. This article aims to clarify what exactly the subject matter of natural language ontology is, what sorts of linguistic data it should take into account, how natural language ontology relates to other branches of metaphysics, in what ways natural language ontology is important, and what may be distinctive (...) of the ontological categories and structures reflected in natural language. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the view that number words in argument position retain the meaning they have on an adjectival or determiner use, as argued by Hofweber :179–225, 2005) and Moltmann :499–534, 2013a, 2013b). In particular the paper re-evaluates syntactic evidence from German given in Moltmann to that effect.

This paper will first give an overview of the role of events in semantics against the background of Davidsonian semantics and its Neo-Davidsonian variant. Second, it will discuss some serious issues for standard views of events in contemporary semantics and present novel proposals of how to address them. These are [1] the semantic role of abstract (or Kimean) states, [2] wide scope adverbials, and [3] the status of verbs as event predicates with respect to the mass-count distinction. The paper will (...) show that abstract states as the entities described by (most) stative verbs are incompatible with Neo-Davidsonian event semantics and proposes a decompositional analysis of stative verbs that may be able to overcome the difficulty. The paper will argue that in addition to Davidsonian events, the semantics of adverbials requires events as truthmakers as well as actions as more complex entities sharply distinguished from events. The paper will also argue that the verbal domain of events sides with mass nouns rather than dividing into mass and count, unlike event nouns. (shrink)

Existence as reflected in natural language is not a univocal notion, but divides into different modes of being, such as existence (as, roughly, endurance) and occurrence. One aim of the paper is to distinguish sharply between abstract artifacts and non-existent objects (e.g., plans vs. planned events that fail to occur); another is to argue for validity as a mode of being distinct from existence, as well as for corresponding distinctions among non-being.

This paper defends the view that attitudinal objects such as claims, beliefs, judgments, and requests form an ontological category of its own sharply distinguished from that of events and states and that of propositions. Attitudinal objects play a central role in attitude reports and avoid the conceptual and empirical problems for propositions. Unlike the latter, attitudinal objects bear a particular connection to normativity. The paper will also discuss the syntactic basis of a semantics of attitude reports based on attitudinal objects.

This paper will outline a novel semantics of verbs of saying and of quotation based on Austin’s (1962) distinction among levels of linguistic acts (illocutionary, locutionary, rhetic, phatic, and phonetic acts). It will propose a way of understanding the notion of a rhetic act and argue that it is well-reflected in the semantics of natural language. The paper will furthermore outline a novel, unified and compositional semantics of quotation which is guided by two ideas. First, quotations convey properties related to (...) lower-level (phonetic or phatic) linguistic acts; second, such meanings of quotations are strictly based on syntactic structure, namely a lower-level (phonetic, phonological or morpho-syntactic) structure as part of the syntactic structure that is input to semantic interpretation. Such lower-level linguistic structures will contribute properties of utterances, to the semantic composition of the sentence, in one way or another. (shrink)

This chapter gives a truthmaker-based account of the semantics of 'reifying' quantifiers like 'something' when they act as complements of intensional transitive verbs ('need', 'look for'). It argues that such quantifiers range over 'variable satisfiers' of the attitudinal object described by the verb (e.g. the need or the search).

This paper argues that attitudinal objects, entities of the sort of John's judgment, John's thought, and John's claim, should play the role of propositions, as the cognitive products of cognitive acts, not the acts themselves.

The notion of existence is a very puzzling one philosophically. Often philosophers have appealed to linguistic properties of sentences stating existence. However, the appeal to linguistic intuitions has generally not been systematic and without serious regard of relevant issues in linguistic semantics. This paper has two aims. On the one hand, it will look at statements of existence from a systematic linguistic point of view, in order to try to clarify what the actual semantics of such statements in fact is. (...) On the other hand, it will explore what sort of ontology such statements reflect. The first aim is one of linguistic semantics; the second aim is one of descriptive metaphysics. Philosophically, existence statements appear to reflect the distinction between endurance and perdurance as well as particular notions of abstract states and of kinds. Linguistically, statements of existence involve a particular way of drawing the distinction between eventive and stative verbs and between individual-level and stage-level predicates as well as a particular approach to the semantics of bare plurals and mass nouns. (shrink)

This paper defends 'plural reference', the view that definite plurals refer to several individuals at once, and it explores how the view can account for a range of phenomena that have been discussed in the linguistic literature.

This paper argues for a distinction between fictional characters, as parts of intentionally created abstract artifacts, and intentional objects, as nonexistent objects generated by referential acts that fail to refer. It argues that intentional objects as the nonexistent objects of imagination and other objectual attitudes are well-reflected in natural language, though in a highly restricted way, reflecting their ontological dependence on referential acts. The paper elaborates how that ontological dependence can be understood.

This paper discusses three approaches to the semantics of event nominalizations and adverbial modification: the Davidsonian account, the Kimian account, and the truthmaker account. It argues that a combination of all three accounts is needed for the semantics of the full range of event, trope, and state nominalizations in English.

Natural languages generally distinguishes among different existence predicates for different types of entities, such as English 'exist', 'occur', and 'obtain'. The paper gives an in-depth discussion and analysis of a range of existence predicates in natural language within the general project of descriptive metaphysics, or more specifically ‘natural language ontology’.

Throughout history, philosophers have drawn on language to clarify or uncover philosophically relevant intuitions, making a tacit distinction between core and periphery of language. This paper argues that such intuitions have the same status as linguistic intuitions, neither of which has the status of belief or even acceptance. This leads to the view that linguistically reflected philosophically relevant intuitions are part of the knowledge of grammar in an extended sense.

The notions of part and whole play an important role for ontology and in many areas of the semantics of natural language. Both in philosophy and linguistic semantics, usually a particular notion of part structure is used, that of extensional mereology. This paper argues that such a notion is insufficient for ontology and, especially, for the semantic analysis of the relevant constructions of natural language. What is needed for the notion of part structure, in addition to an ordering among parts, (...) is the notion of integrated whole. In the context of semantics, the notion of an integrated whole needs to be relativized to a situation, or so it is argued. (shrink)

This paper will focus on a philosophically significant construction whose semantics brings together two important notions in Kit Fine’s philosophy, the notion of truthmaking and the notion of a variable embodiment, or its extension, namely what I call a ‘variable object’. This is the construction of definite NPs like 'the number of people that can fit into the bus', 'the book John needs to write', and 'the gifted mathematician John claims to be'. Such NPs are analysed as standing for variable (...) objects, which are part of the 'shallow', construction-driven ontology of natural language, yet are real. (shrink)

The question whether natural language permits quantification over intentional objects as the ‘nonexistent’ objects of thought is the topic of a major philosophical controversy, as is the status of intentional objects as such. This paper will argue that natural language does reflect a particular notion of intentional object and in particular that certain types of natural language constructions (generally disregarded in the philosophical literature) cannot be analysed without positing intentional objects. At the same time, those intentional objects do not come (...) for free; rather they are strictly dependent on intentional acts that generally need to have a presence, in one way or another, in the semantic structure of the sentence. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory of situated part structures involving the notion of an integrated and not just a part-of relation. The theory is applied in particular to the semantics of the modifiers 'whole' and 'individual', as in 'the whole collection' and 'the individual students'. The adnominal modifiers 'whole' and 'individual' have been entirely been ignored in the linguistic and philosophical literature, even though they pose significant challenges for standard views of reference, of the semantics of referential NPs, and for (...) ontology (the exception being medieval philosophy of language where 'whole' has received significant attention). 'Whole' strikingly displays two opposite readings: 'The whole collection is expensive' can mean - 'as a whole' or 'every part'. The paper proposes that the two readings be traced to two different conceptions of part structures of objects: one according to which the parts of an objects are just the material parts and another, Aristotelian conception according to which the parts of an object include properties of form. (shrink)

Ever since Frege, propositions have played a central role in philosophy of language. Propositions are generally conceived as abstract objects that have truth conditions essentially and fulfill both the role of the meaning of sentences and of the objects or content of propositional attitudes. More recently, the abstract conception of propositions has given rise to serious dissatisfaction among a number of philosophers, who have instead proposed a conception of propositional content based on cognitive acts (Hanks, Moltmann, Soames). This approach is (...) not entirely new, though, but has important precedents in early analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The aim of this volume is bring together some of the most important texts from the relevant historical literature and new contributions from contemporary proponents of act-based conceptions of propositional content. (shrink)

Nominalizations of modal predicates have received little, if any, attention in the semantic or philosophical literature. This paper will argue that nominalizations of modal predicates require recognizing a novel ontological category of modal objects and it will outline a new semantics of modals based on modal objects.

This paper gives a characterization of the ontology implicit in natural language and the entities it involves, situates natural language ontology within metaphysics, and responds to Chomskys' dismissal of externalist semantics.

The question whether numbers are objects is a central question in the philosophy of mathematics. Frege made use of a syntactic criterion for objethood: numbers are objects because there are singular terms that stand for them, and not just singular terms in some formal language, but in natural language in particular. In particular, Frege (1884) thought that both noun phrases like the number of planets and simple numerals like eight as in (1) are singular terms referring to numbers as abstract (...) objects. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that not only PPs and adverbs can act as predicates of the event argument of the verb, but certain NPs and certain clauses can, as well. I will give syntactic and semantic arguments that NPs that are cognate objects and clauses of (at least some) nonbridge verbs are optional predicates of the event argument of the verb. With respect to clauses, I will argue that for independent reasons the meaning of both independent and embedded sentences (...) can be construed as event-properties, namely as properties of intentional events. (shrink)

This thesis explores the syntax and semantics of coordinate structures on the basis of three-dimensional syntactic structures. In particular it gives an analysis of sentences of the sort 'a man came and a woman left who knew each other well' on the basis of implicit coordination of NPs, made available within three-dimensionional syntactic structures..

The generic pronoun 'one' (or its empty counterpart, arbitrary PRO) exhibits a range of properties that show a special connection to the first person, or rather the relevant intentional agent (speaker, addressee, or described agent). The paper argues that generic 'one' involves generic quantification in which the predicate is applied to a given entity ‘as if’ to the relevant agent himself. This is best understood in terms of simulation, a central notion in some recent developments in the philosophy of mind (...) and cognitive science (Simulation Theory). (shrink)

It is a standard assumption in contemporary metaphysics that concrete objects come with a location in space and time. This applies not only to material objects and events, but also modes (such as the roundness of the apple, the softness of the pillow, Socrates' wisdom) and entities that have been called 'disturbances' (e.g. holes, folds, faults, and scratches). Taking the approach of descriptive metaphysics, I will show that modes and disturbances fail to have a bearer-independent spatial location. This allows for (...) a metaphysical explanation of the Chomskyan contrast between 'There is a fly believed to be in the bottle' and the unacceptable 'There is a flaw believed to be in the argument'. A subsidiary point this paper makes is that in their lack of a direct spatial location, modes need to be sharply distinguished from tropes as a category of foundationalist metaphysics that has been at the center of a pursuit of a one-category ontology since Williams (1953). (shrink)

This paper argues for an ontological distinction between two kinds of universals, 'kinds of tropes' such as 'wisdom' and properties such as 'the property of being wise'. It argues that the distinction is parallel to that between two kinds of collections, pluralities such as 'the students' and collective objects such as 'the class'. The paper argues for the priortity of distributive readings with pluralities on the basis of predicates of extent or shape, such 'large' or 'long'.

This my 3am interview with Richard Marshall about my work and its inspirations. It focuses on my research on parst and wholes, tropes, and abstract objects.

Based on the notion of a trope, this paper gives a novel analysis of identificational sentences such as 'this is Mary','this is a beautiful woman', 'this looks like Mary', or 'this is the same lump of clay, but not the same statue as that'.

The book argues for Plural Reference for the semantics of natural language and makes the connection between Plural Reference and Alternative Semantics for the purpose of the interpretation of three-dimensional syntactic structures of coordinate sentences (in the sense of my 1992 MIT Ph D thesis).

Various syntacticians have argued that coordinate structures involve a three-dimensional syntactic structure. This paper proposes an interpretation of three-dimensional syntactic structures in terms of plural reference and argues that such structures give further support for plural reference, the view that plural terms refer to several entities at once, rather than referring to a single plural individual.

Possible worlds semantics faces a range of difficulties for at least certain types of modals, especially deontic modals with their distinction between heavy and light permissions and obligations. This paper outlines a new semantics of modals that aims to overcome some of those difficulties. The semantics is based on an a novel ontology of modal objects, entities like obligations, permissions, needs, as well as epistemic states, abilities, and essences. Moreover, it is based on truthmaking, in the sense of Fine’s recent (...) truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

This paper outlines a semantic account of attitude reports and deontic modals based on cognitive and illocutionary products, mental states, and modal products, as opposed to the notion of an abstract proposition or a cognitive act.

In their paper ‘Degrees as Kinds’, Anderson and Morzycki, demonstrate how certain constructions in a range of languages treat kinds, manners, and degrees alike. Their proposal is to identify degrees with kinds of states and they consider states to be interchangeable with tropes. In these comments, I will raise some issues about the interchangeability of (concrete) states and tropes as well as the category of concrete states as well as Anderson and Morzycki's analysis of the comparative.

This is a prepublication version of my book Objects and Attitudes. The book develops a novel semantics of attitude reports, modal sentences, and quotation based on the view that sentences semantically act as predicates of various attitudinal and modal objects, entities like claims, requests, promises, obligations, and permissions, rather than standing for abstract propositions playing the role of objects. The approach develops truthmaker semantics for attitudinal and modal objects and has a wide range of applications to issues in philosophy of (...) language, semantics, and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

I call 'empathetic attitude reports' attitude reports such as 'I believe you that you will come back' and 'I understand you that you are not in the mood'. I will argue that such attitude reports cannot be analysed in terms of two-place attitudinal relations but involve an essential interpersonal relation of trust or understanding.

This chapter argues that special quantifiers such as 'something' when occurring in argument position are not ordinary or substitutional quantifiers; rather they have a reifying force introducing a domain of tropes or kinds of tropes to quantify over.

This paper gives an account of constructions with the noun 'case' based on truthmaking and argues that 'cases' form their own ontological category.

This paper gives an outline of natural language ontology as a subdiscipline of both linguistics and philosophy. It argues that part of the constructional ontology reflected in natural language is in significant respects on a par with syntax (on the generative view).

Proper names are generally taken to be count nouns. This paper argues that this is mistaken and that at least in some languages, for example German, names divide into mass and count. Making use of Kayne's (2005, 2010) theory of light nouns, this paper argues that light nouns are part of (simple) names and that a mass-count distinction among light nouns explains the behavior of certain types of names in German as mass rather than count. The paper elaborates the role (...) of light nouns with new generalizations regarding their linguistic behavior in quantificational and pronominal NPs, their selection of relative pronouns in German, and a general difference in the support of plural anaphora between English and German. (shrink)

This paper gives an outline of truthmaker semantics for natural language against the background of standard possible-worlds semantics. It develops a truthmaker semantics for attitude reports and deontic modals based on an ontology of attitudinal and modal objects and on a semantic function of clauses as predicates of such objects. It also présents new motivations for 'object-based truthmaker semantics' from intensional transitive verbs such as ‘need’, ‘look for’, ‘own’, and ‘buy’ and gives an outline of their semantics. This paper is (...) a commissioned 'target' article, with commentaries by W. Davis, B. Arsenijevic, K. Moulton, K. Liefke, M. Kaufmann, R. Matthews, P. Portner and A. Rubinstein, P. Elliott, G. Ramchand and my reply. (shrink)

This paper argues that truth predicates in natural language and their variants, predicates of correctness, satisfaction and validity, do not apply to propositions (not even with 'that'-clauses), but rather to a range of attitudinal and modal objects. As such natural language reflects a notion of truth that is primarily a normative notion of correctness constitutive of representational objects. The paper moreover argues that 'true' is part of a larger class of satisfaction predicates whose semantic differences are best accounted for in (...) terms of a truthmaker theory along the lines of Fine's recent truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

The semantic function of the modifier 'together' in adnominal position has generally been considered to be that of preventing a distributive reading of the predicate. This paper will argue that this view is mistaken. The semantic function of adnominal 'together' rather is that of inducing a cumulative measurement of the group that together is associated with. The measurement-based analysis of adnominal together that I propose can also, with some modifications, be extended to adverbial occurrences of together.

This paper argues that the notion of a single object or 'being one' does not require worldly or perceived conditions of integrity and even less so concept-relative atomicity. It generally is based on conditions of integrity of some sort, but not strictly so. It rather is imposed by the use of count categories in natural language and thus makes a case for linguistic idealism.

This paper gives a perspectival overview of the semantics of potential property-referring terms and presents new and surprising generalizations about explicit property-referring terms like 'the property of being wise', which raise fundamental issues regarding ontology and learnability and a core-periphery distinction in natural language ontology.

This is my entry on natural language ontology in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.