Quantifiers and the ontology of natural language

Abstract

This article discusses different kinds of entities over which natural languages quantify. It presents a general introduction to the theory of natural language quantifiers as expressions denoting a set of sets of entities or (more generally) expressions in one way or another introducing a quantifier in the semantics of their respective sentences. The author explores how and why expressions of natural language refer to the kinds of entities other than individual objects, i.e. such entities as possible worlds, temporal intervals, events and degrees. He thereby illustrates the object and methods of one of the more recent trends in formal semantics which is the formal study, by way of model-theoretic and truth-conditional analysis, of structural aspects of the meaning of expressions in natural languages, including the various approaches to syntax. Special attention is given to the answers contemporary formal semantics can provide for a number of fundamental questions in the philosophy of language and philosophy in general. It is argued that natural language, as distinct from the abstract, speculative and/or critical/methodological arguments commonly used by the philosophers of language, has the capacity of making explicit the kind of metaphysical entities which lend themselves to be perceived as ‘real’ by conscious individuals possessing the knowledge of one or more natural languages.