Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse

Download or read book Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse written by Nicholas Asher and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1993-04-30 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is about abstract objects and the ways we refer to them in natural language. Asher develops a semantical and metaphysical analysis of these entities in two stages. The first reflects the rich ontology of abstract objects necessitated by the forms of language in which we think and speak. A second level of analysis maps the ontology of natural language metaphysics onto a sparser domain--a more systematic realm of abstract objects that are fully analyzed. This second level reflects the commitments of real metaphysics. The models for these commitments assign truth conditions to natural language discourse. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR