Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language
Friederike Moltmann
Abstract
Abstract objects such as properties, propositions, numbers, degrees, and expression types are at the centre of many philosophical debates. Philosophers and linguists alike generally hold the view that natural language allows rather generously for reference to abstracts objects of the various sorts. The project of this book is to investigate in a fully systematic way whether and how natural language permits reference to abstract objects. For that purpose, the book will introduce a great range of new linguistic generalizations and make systematic use of recent semantic and syntactic theories. It ... More
Abstract objects such as properties, propositions, numbers, degrees, and expression types are at the centre of many philosophical debates. Philosophers and linguists alike generally hold the view that natural language allows rather generously for reference to abstracts objects of the various sorts. The project of this book is to investigate in a fully systematic way whether and how natural language permits reference to abstract objects. For that purpose, the book will introduce a great range of new linguistic generalizations and make systematic use of recent semantic and syntactic theories. It will arrive at an ontology that differs rather radically from the one that philosophers, but also linguists, generally take natural language to involve. Reference to abstract objects is much more marginal than is generally thought. Instead of making reference to abstract objects, natural language, with its more central terms and constructions, makes reference to (concrete) particulars, especially tropes, as well as pluralities of particulars. Reference to abstract objects is generally reserved for syntactically complex and less central terms of the sort the property of being wise or the number eight.
Keywords:
abstract objects,
natural language semantics,
properties,
universals,
propositions,
tropes,
numbers,
degrees,
propositional attitudes,
formal semantics,
ontology,
nominalization action-product distinction
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199608744 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608744.001.0001 |
