Mind 118 (471):583 - 646 (2009)
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This article investigates the semantics of sentences that express numerical averages, focusing initially on cases such as 'The average American has 2.3 children'. Such sentences have been used both by linguists and philosophers to argue for a disjuncture between semantics and ontology. For example, Noam Chomsky and Norbert Hornstein have used them to provide evidence against the hypothesis that natural language semantics includes a reference relation holding between words and objects in the world, whereas metaphysicians such as Joseph Melia and Stephen Yablo have used them to provide evidence that apparent singular reference need not be taken as ontologically committing. We develop a fully general and independently justified compositional semantics in which such constructions are assigned truth conditions that are not ontologically problematic, and show that our analysis is superior to all extant rivals. Our analysis provides evidence that a good semantics yields a sensible ontology. It also reveals that natural language contains genuine singular terms that refer to numbers
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DOI | 10.1093/mind/fzp094 |
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References found in this work BETA
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition.Saul Kripke - 1982 - Harvard University Press.
The Foundations of Arithmetic.Gottlob Frege - 1884/1950 - Evanston: Ill., Northwestern University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Semantics and Metasemantics in the Context of Generative Grammar.Seth Yalcin - 2014 - In Alexis Burgess & Brett Sherman (eds.), Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning. Oxford University Press. pp. 17-54.
Chomskyan Arguments Against Truth-Conditional Semantics Based on Variability and Co-predication.Agustín Vicente - 2021 - Erkenntnis 86 (4):919-940.
The Semantics and Ontology of The Average American.Collins John - 2017 - Journal of Semantics 34 (3):373-405.
Sortal, Relational, and Functional Interpretations of Nouns and Russian Container Constructions.B. H. Partee & V. Borschev - 2012 - Journal of Semantics 29 (4):445-486.
View all 18 citations / Add more citations
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