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Levels of linguistic acts and the semantics of saying and quotingIn Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), Interpreting J. L. Austin: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2017.
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Natural Language Ontology (Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics)In Ricki Bliss & James Miller (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, Routledge. 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).
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Attitudinal objects: their ontology and importance for philosophy and natural language semanticsIn Brian Andrew Ball & Christoph Schuringa (eds.), The Act and Object of Judgment: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, Routledge. 2019.
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Philosophical and Linguistic Intuitions and the Core-Periphery DistinctionIn Ryan M. Nefdt, Gabe Dupre & Kate Stanton (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Linguistics, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.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.
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76This 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 ontologic…Read more
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113Special quantifiers are quantifiers like 'something', 'everything', and 'several things'. They are special both semantically and syntactically and play quite an important role in philosophy, in discussions of ontological commitment to abstract objects, of higher-order metaphysics, and of the apparent need for propositions. This paper will review and discuss in detail the syntactic and semantic peculiarities of special quantifiers and show that they are incompatible with substitutional and higher…Read more
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Philosophers who accept tropes generally agree that tropes do play a role in the semantics of natural language, namely as the objects of reference of nominalizations of adjectives, such as Socrates' wisdom or the beauty of the landscape. In fact, a philosophical discussion of the ontology of tropes can hardly do without the use of such nominalizations. In this paper, I will argue that tropes play a further important role in the semantics of natural language, namely in the semantics of bare demon…Read more
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253Part Structures in Situations: The Semantics of 'Individual' and 'Whole'Linguistics and Philosophy 28 (5). 2005.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 se…Read more
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499Part Structures, Integrity, and the Mass-Count DistinctionSynthese 116 (1). 1998.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…Read more
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223Events, tropes, and truthmakingPhilosophical Studies 134 (3): 363-403. 2007.Nominalizations are expressions that are particularly challenging philosophically in that they help form singular terms that seem to refer to abstract or derived objects often considered controversial. The three standard views about the semantics of nominalizations are [1] that they map mere meanings onto objects, [2] that they refer to implicit arguments, and [3] that they introduce new objects, in virtue of their compositional semantics. In the second case, nominalizations do not add anything …Read more
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261Metaphysics First or Language First: The Notion of a Single ObjectIn Richard Gaskin (ed.), The Question of Idealism. forthcoming.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.
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192Modes of Being and Non-Being: Existence, Occurrence, and ValidityGrazer Philosophische Studien. forthcoming.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.
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973am magazine interview: Parts, Wholes, Abstract objects, Tropes and Ontology3Am Magazine. 2014.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.
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280Events in Contemporary SemanticsIn James Bahoh (ed.), 21st-Century Philosophy of Events: Beyond the Analytic / Continental Divide, Edinburgh University Press. forthcoming.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 w…Read more
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332Reference to Properties in Natural LanguageIn A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Properties, Routledge. 2024.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.
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272Special Quantification: Substitutional, Higher-Order, and Nominalization ApproachesIn Alex Grzankowski & Anthony Savile (eds.), Thought: its Origin and Reach. Essays in Honour of Mark Sainsbury, Routledge. forthcoming.Prior’s problem consists in the impossibility of replacing clausal complements of most attitude verbs by ‘ordinary’ NPs; only ‘special quantifiers’ that is, quantifiers like 'something' permit a replacement, preserving grammaticality or the same reading of the verb: (1) a. John claims that he won. b. ??? John claims a proposition / some thing. c. John claims something. In my 2013 book Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language, I have shown how this generalizes to nonre…Read more
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461Is 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
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415Modes, 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
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345Natural Language Ontology (SEP entry)Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.This is my entry on natural language ontology in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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165Empathetic Attitude ReportsIn D. Gutzman & S. Repp (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 26, 2021. 2021.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.
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325Tastes and the Ontology of Impersonal Perception ReportsIn Jeremy Wyatt, Julia Zakkou & Dan Zeman (eds.), Perspectives on Taste: Aesthetics, Language, Metaphysics, and Experimental Philosophy, Routledge. 2022.Sentences such as 'Chocolate tastes good' have been widely discussed as sentences that give rise to faultless disagreement. As such, they actually belong to the more general class of impersonal perception reports, which include 'The violin sounds / looks strange' as well sentences that are about an agent-centered situation such as 'It feels / seems like it is going to rain'. I maintain the view that faultless disagreement is due to first person-based genericity, which, roughly, consists in attri…Read more
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432Names, 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
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461Cognitive 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.
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437Truthmaking, 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.
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466Truthmaker-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
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537Clauses as Semantic Predicates: Difficulties for Possible-Worlds SemanticsFestschrift for Angelika Kratzer. 2020.The standard view of clauses embedded under attitude verbs or modal predicates is that they act as terms standing for propositions, a view that faces a range of philosophical and linguistic difficulties. Recently an alternative has been explored according to which embedded clauses act semantically as predicates of content-bearing objects. This paper argues that this approach faces serious problems when it is based on possible worlds-semantics. It outlines a development of the approach in terms o…Read more
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418Mass 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
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154The 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 …Read more
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743Truthmaker Semantics for Natural Language: Attitude Verbs, Modals, and Intensional Transitive VerbsTheoretical Linguistics 3 159-200. 2020.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 ou…Read more
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385There 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
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PhD, 1992
La Terrasse, Rhone-Alpes, France
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |