-
466'Truth Predicates' in Natural LanguageIn José Martinez, Achourioti Dora & Galinon Henri (eds.), Unifying the Philosophy of Truth., Springer. pp. 57-83. 2015.This takes a closer look at the actual semantic behavior of apparent truth predicates in English and re-evaluates the way they could motivate particular philosophical views regarding the formal status of 'truth predicates' and their semantics. The paper distinguishes two types of 'truth predicates' and proposes semantic analyses that better reflect the linguistic facts. These analyses match particular independently motivated philosophical views.
-
455Natural Language Ontology (Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics)In Ricki Bliss & James Miller (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, Routledge. pp. 325-338. 2020.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).
-
445Propositions, attitudinal objects, and the distinction between actions and productsCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume on Propositions, Edited by G. Rattan and D. Hunter 43 (5-6): 679-701. 2013.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.
-
441Parts and Wholes in SemanticsOxford University Press. 1997.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 ad…Read more
-
441Partial Content and Expressions of Part and Whole. Discussion of Stephen Yablo: AboutnessPhilosophical Studies 174 (3): 797-808. 2017.In 'Aboutness' (MIT Press 2014), Yablo argues for the importance of the notions of partial content and of partial truth. This paper argues that those notions are involved in a much greater range of entities than acknowledged by Yablo. The paper also argues that some of those entities involve a notion of partial satisfaction as well as partial existence (and partial validity).
-
439Cognitive Products and the Semantics of Attitude Verbs and Deontic ModalsIn Friederike Moltmann & Mark Textor (eds.), Act-Based Conceptions of Propositional Content. Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, Oxford University Press. pp. 254-289. 2017.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.
-
435Truthmaker-Based Content: Syntactic, Semantic and Ontological ContextsTheoretical Linguistics 47 (1-2): 155-187. 2021.This is a reply to the commentaries on my paper 'Truthmaker Semantics for Natural Language: Attitude Verbs, Modals, and Intensional Transitive Verbs'. The paper is a commissioned 'target' article, with commentaries by W. Davis, B. Arsenijevic, K. Moulton, K. Liefke, M. Kaufman, R. Matthews, P. Portner and A. Rubinstein, P. Elliott, and G. Ramchand
-
415Is there reference to abstract objects?In Ana Poliakoff (ed.), Linguistic and Philosophical Thought about Reference, Lexington Books. forthcoming.Philosophers frequently draw on natural language to motivate properties, numbers, and propositions as objects, and it is generally taken for granted that abstract objects of this sort are well-reflected in natural language and in fact that reference to them in natural language is pervasive In this paper, I will review and modify in a certain way the view I had advanced in Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language (Moltmann 2013a). This is the view that natural language permits refer…Read more
-
395Coordination and ComparativesDissertation, MIT. 1992.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..
-
392Outline of an Object-Based Truthmaker Semantics for Modals and Propositional AttitudesIn Dirk Kindermann, Peter van Elswyk, Andy Egan & Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini (eds.), Unstructured Content, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.Against the background of standard possible-worlds semantics, this paper outlines a truthmaker approach to the semantics of attitude reports and modal sentences based on an ontology of attitudinal and modal objects.
-
391Mass and Count in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science (edited book)Benjamins. 2020.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. In many ways, the topic remains under-r…Read more
-
390Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural LanguageOxford University Press. 2013.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 object…Read more
-
384Truthmaking, Satisfaction and the Force-Content DistinctionIn Gabriele Mras & Michael Schmitz (eds.), Force, Content and the Unity of the Proposition, Routledge. 2022.This paper presents a novel perspective on the force-content distinction making use of truthmaker semantics and an ontology of attitudinal objects, things that are neither acts (or states) nor propositions. It gives a novel norm-based definition of the notion of direction of fit, strictly linking truth and (non-action-guiding) correctness.
-
383Names, light nouns, and countabilityLinguistic Inquiry 54 (1). 2022.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 genera…Read more
-
381Levels of Ontology and Natural Language: the Case of the Ontology of Parts and WholesIn James Miller (ed.), The Language of Ontology, Oxford University Press. 2021.It is common in contemporary metaphysics to distinguish two levels of ontology: the ontology of ordinary objects and the ontology of fundamental reality. This papers argues that natural language reflects not only the ontology of ordinary objects, but also a language-driven ontology, which is involved in the mass-count distinction and part-structure-sensitive semantic selection, as well as perhaps the light ontology of pleonastic entities. The paper recasts my older theory of situated part struct…Read more
-
372Modes, Disturbances, and Spatio-Temporal LocationIn Alex Moran & Carlo Rossi (eds.), Objects and Properties, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.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 locati…Read more
-
369Attitudinal Objects: their Ontology and Importance for Philosophy and Natural Language SemanticsIn Brian Brian & Christoph Schuringa (eds.), The Notion of Judgment: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 180-201. 2019.This paper argues for the philosophical and semantic importance of attitudinal objects, entities such as judgments, claims, beliefs, demands, and desires, as an ontological category distinct from that of events and states and from that of propositions. The paper presents significant revisions and refinements of the notion of an attitudinal object as it was developed in my previous work.
-
366The Number of Planets, a Number-Referring Term?In Philip A. Ebert & Marcus Rossberg (eds.), Abstractionism: Essays in Philosophy of Mathematics, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 113-129. 2016.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 obj…Read more
-
364Objects and AttitudesOxford University Press. forthcoming.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…Read more
-
364Ontological Dependence, Spatial Location, and Part StructureIn Roberta Ferrario, Stefano Borgo, Laure Vieu & Claudio Masolo (eds.), Festschrift for Nicola Guarino, Ios Publications. 2019.This paper discusses attributively limited concrete objects such as disturbances (holes, folds, scratches etc), tropes, and attitudinal objects, which lack the sort of spatial location or part structures expected of them as concrete objects. The paper proposes an account in terms of (quasi-Fregean) abstraction, which has so far been applied only to abstract objects.
-
357Propositional attitudes without propositionsSynthese 135 (1). 2003.The most common account of attitude reports is the relational analysis according towhich an attitude verb taking that-clause complements expresses a two-placerelation between agents and propositions and the that-clause acts as an expressionwhose function is to provide the propositional argument. I will argue that a closerexamination of a broader range of linguistic facts raises serious problems for thisanalysis and instead favours a Russellian `multiple relations analysis' (which hasgenerally be…Read more
-
355There is an emerging view according to which countability is not an integral part of the lexical meaning of singular count nouns, but is ‘added on’ or ‘made available’, whether syntactically, semantically or both. This view has been pursued by Borer and Rothstein among others in order to deal with classifier languages such as Chinese as well as challenges to standard views of the mass-count distinction such as object mass nouns such as furniture. I will discuss a range of data, partly from Germa…Read more
-
352States versus Tropes. Comments on C. Anderson and M. Morzycki: 'Degrees as Kinds'Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 33 (3): 829-841. 2015.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.
-
340Attitudinal Objects and PropositionsIn Chris Tillman & Adam Murray (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Propositions, Routledge. 2022.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 att…Read more
-
326Various 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.
-
321The Semantics of TogetherNatural Language Semantics 12 (4): 289-318. 2004.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 occurrence…Read more
-
321Attitude Reports, Cognitive Products, and Attitudinal Objects: A Response to G. Felappi On Product‐Based Accounts of AttitudesThought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (1): 3-12. 2017.In a range of recent and not so recent work, I have developed a novel semantics of attitude reports on which the notion of an attitudinal object or cognitive product takes center stage, that is, entities such as thoughts claims and decisions. The purpose of this note is to give a brief summary of this account against the background of the standard semantics of attitude reports and to show that the various sorts of criticism that Felappi recently advanced against it are mistaken.
-
309Natural Language Ontology (SEP entry)Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.This is my entry on natural language ontology in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
-
292Tropes, Bare Demonstratives, and Apparent Statements of IdentityNoûs 47 (2): 346-370. 2011.Philosophers who accept tropes generally agree that tropes act as the objects of reference of nominalizations of adjectives, such as 'Socrates’ wisdom' or 'the beauty of the landscape'. This paper argues that tropes play a further important role in the semantics of natural language, namely in the semantics of bare demonstratives like 'this' and 'that' in what in linguistics is called identificational sentences.
-
287Situations, alternatives, and the semantics of ‘cases’Linguistics and Philosophy 44 (1): 1-41. 2019.This paper argues that NPs with case as head noun stand for situations in their role as truthmakers within a sentential or epistemic case space. The paper develops a unified semantic analysis of case-constructions of the various sorts within a truthmaker-based version of alternative semantics.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PhD, 1992
La Terrasse, Rhone-Alpes, France
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |