A philosophical grammar

• Main Author: Read, Stephen
• Published: University of Oxford 1978
• Subjects: 100
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.470126

The aim of these chapters is to isolate, and then to characterise further, a way of using nounphrases which has been called a uniquely referring or purely referential use. I will distinguish it from another sort of use or occurrence which is truly predicative of those and other expressions in a sentence. Central to this distinction is a negation-argument of Frege's. Frege used it to distinguish quantified expressions from true names. I shall use it both to distinguish certain uses of expressions as names from their other uses as quantified phrases, and to find a logical form for quantified expressions. The latter application shows how Frege's claim that the quantifier in such a nounphrase belongs with the predicate means that quantified phrases are used predicatively. The argument is closely related to a point attributed to Geach, that predicates may be negated, while names cannot. I will suggest that the essential difference between quantified phrases and referring phrases is that the former are predicative, and may be negated. Then the latter, the referring uses, are not predicative. Indeed, they are in a sense semantically inert, or vacuous. They serve simply to provide an object for the truth-condition. It is this vacuity which renders them not subject to negation.