Abstract
Quantified expressions in natural language generally are taken to act like quantifiers in logic, which either range over entities that need to satisfy or not satisfy the predicate in order for the sentence to be true or otherwise are substitutional quantifiers. I will argue that there is a philosophically rather important class of quantified expressions in English that act quite differently, a class that includes something, nothing, and several things. In addition to expressing quantification, such expressions act like nominalizations, introducing a new domain of objects that would not have been present in the semantic structure of the sentence otherwise. The entities those expressions introduce are of just the same sort as those that certain ordinary nominalizations refer to (such as John's wisdom or John's belief that S), namely they are tropes or entities related to tropes. Analysing certain quantifiers as nominalizing quantifiers will shed a new light on philosophical issues such as the status of properties and the nature of propositional attitudes.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Armstrong, D. (1978): Universals and Scientific Realism, Vols 1 and 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Asher, N. (1993): Reference to Abstract Objects, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
Bach, K. (1997): Do belief reports report beliefs? Pacific Philos. Quart. 78.
Bacon, J. (1988): For modal modelings, J. Philos. Logic 17.
Bacon, J. (1989): A single primitive trope relation, J. Philos. Logic 18.
Baker, M. (1988): Incorporation, Chicago University Press, Chicago.
Bennett, J. (1988): Events and their Names, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Campbell, K. (1990): Abstract Particulars, Blackwell, Oxford.
Carlson, G. (1978): Reference to kinds in English, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusets, Amherst.
Chierchia, G. (1984): Topics in the syntax and semantics of infinitivals and gerunds, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Chierchia, G. (1998): Reference to kinds across languages, Natural Language Semantics 6(4).
Chomsky, N. (1981): Lectures on Government and Binding, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Davidson, D. (1980a): The logical form of action sentences, in D. Davidson: Essays on Actions and Events. Originally in N. Rescher (ed.), The Logic of Decision and Action, Pittsburgh University Press, Pittsburgh.
Davidson, D. (1980b): The individuation of events, in D. Davidson: Essays on Actions and Events. Originally in N. Rescher (ed.), The Logic of Decision and Action, Pittsburgh University Press, Pittsburgh.
Fine, K. (1982): Acts, events and things, in W. Leinfellner et al. (eds.), Language and Ontology, Proceedings of the Eighth Wittgenstein Symposium, Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna.
Fine, K. (1999): Things and their parts, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23.
Frege, G. (1892): Funktion und Begriff, reprinted in G. Patzig (ed.), Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Goettingen.
Goldman, A. (1970): A Theory of Human Action, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Kim, J. (1976): Events as property exemplifications, in M. Brand and D. Walton (eds.), Action Theory, Reidel, Dordrecht, reprinted in S. Laurence and C. Macdonald (eds.).
Laurence, S. and Macdonald, C. (eds.) (1998): Contemporary Readings in the Foundations of Metaphysics, Blackwell, Oxford.
Lombard, L. B. (1986): Events. A Metaphysical Study, Routledge/Kegan, London.
Lombard, L. B. (1998): Ontologies of events, in S. Laurence and C. Macdonald (eds.).
Moltmann, F. (1997): Parts and Wholes in Semantics, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Moltmann, F. (2002): Events as derived objects, in C. Beyssade et al. (eds.), Empirical Issues in Formal Syntax and Semantics 4, Presses Universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris.
Moltmann, F. (2003): Propositional Attitudes without Propositions, Synt.
Prior, A. (1971): Objects of Thought, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Quine, W. V. O. (1960): Word and Object, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Russell, B. (1913): Theory of Knowledge, reprinted in 1993 by Routledge, London.
Russell, B. (1918): The philosophy of logical atomism, in B. Russell, Logic and Knowledge, Routledge, London.
Schiffer, S. (1987): Remnants of Meaning, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Simons, P. (1994): Particulars in particular clothing: Three trope theories of substance, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research bd54(3), reprinted in S. Laurence and C. Macdonald (eds.).
Soames, S. (1988): Direct reference, propositional attitudes, and semantic content, in N. Salmon and S. Soames (eds.), Propositional Attitudes, Oxford University Press.
Stalnaker, R. (1984): Inquiry, MIT Press, Cambride, MA.
Strawson, P. (1950): Truth, Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 24, reprinted in S. Blackburn and K. Simmons (eds.), Truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999.
Strawson, P. (1959): Individuals, Methuen, London.
Strawson, P. (1987): Concepts and properties or predication and copulation, Philos. Quart. 37.
Vergnaud, J.-R. (1974): French relative clauses, Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Wiggins, D. (1984): The sense and reference of predicates: A running repair to Frege's doctrine and a plea for the copula, Philos. Quart. 34.
Williams, D. C. (1953): On the elements of being, Review of Metaphysics 7.
Williams, E. (1983): Semantic vs. syntactic categories, Linguistics and Philosophy 5.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Moltmann, F. Nominalizing Quantifiers. Journal of Philosophical Logic 32, 445–481 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025649423579
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025649423579