Abstract objects and the semantics of natural language

Author(s)

• Moltmann, Friederike

Bibliographic Information

Abstract objects and the semantics of natural language

Friederike Moltmann

Oxford University Press, 2013

1st ed

Other Title

Abstract objects & the semantics of natural language

Note

Bibliography: p. [232]-239

Includes indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Abstract objects have been a central topic in philosophy since antiquity. Philosophers have defended various views about abstract objects by appealing to metaphysical considerations, considerations regarding mathematics or science, and, not infrequently, intuitions about natural language. 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. Instead, natural language is rather generous in allowing reference to particularized properties (tropes), the use of nonreferential expressions in apparent referential position, and the use of 'nominalizing expressions', such as quantifiers like 'something'. Reference to abstract objects is achieved generally only by the use of 'reifying terms', such as 'the number eight'.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Reference to Universals
• 2. Reference to Tropes and the Ontology of Tropes
• 3. The Semantics of Special Quantifiers in Predicate Position
• 4. Propositions and Attitudinal Objects
• 5. Intensional Transitive Verbs and their Objects
• 6. Reifying Terms
• Conclusion
• References
• Bibliography
• Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BB12474637
• ISBN:
  • 9780199608744
• Country Code: uk
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Oxford
• Pages/Volumes: x, 244 p.
• Size: 24 cm
• Classification:
  • DC23 : 121.68
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Semantics (Philosophy)
  • LCSH : Abstraction