How to make the world fit our language

an essay in Meinongian semantics

William J. Rapaport

pp. 1-21

in: Grazer Philosophische Studien 14, 1981.

Abstract

Natural languages differ from most formal languages in having a partial, rather than a total, semantic interpretation function; e.g., some noun phrases don't refer. The usual semantics for handling such noun phrases (e.g., Russell, Quine) require syntactic reform. The alternative presented here is semantic expansion, viz., enlarging the range of the interpretaion function to make it total. A specific ontology based on Meinong's Theory of Objects, which can serve as domain on interpretation, is suggested, and related to the work of Castaneda, Frege, Katz and Fodor, Parsons, and Scott.

Cited authors

Meinong Alexius