The proper treatment of singular terms in ordinary English

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Abstract

A free logical analysis of singular terms couched in terms of the semantic theory of Keenan and Faltz (1985) is shown to avoid problems with both Frege's and Russell's treatments. At its heart is the proposal of Keenan and Faltz to reverse the usual mode-theoretic conception of individuals and properties, taking the latter as primitive and the former as derived therefrom. A simple extension of the notion 'property' is then shown to enable a parallel treatment of definite generics.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)661-696
Number of pages36
JournalMind
Volume106
Issue number424
DOIs
StatePublished - 1997

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