Abstract
In the work of both Matti Eklund and John Hawthorne there is an influential semantic
argument for a maximally expansive ontology that is thought to undermine even modest
forms of quantifier variance. The crucial premise of the argument holds that it is impossible
for an ontologically "smaller" language to give a Tarskian semantics for an ontologically
"bigger" language. After explaining the Eklund-Hawthorne argument (in section I), we
show this crucial premise to be mistaken (in section II) by developing a Tarskian semantics
for a mereological universalist language within a mereological nihilist language (a case which
we, and Eklund and Hawthorne, take as representative). After developing this semantics
we step back (in section III) to discuss the philosophical motivations behind the Eklund-
Hawthorne argument’s demand for a semantics. We ultimately conclude that quantifier
variantists can meet any demand for a semantics that might reasonably be imposed upon
them.