Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Plural Predication - Thomas McKay

Plural Predication

By: Thomas McKay

eText | 15 June 2006

At a Glance

eText


$161.18

or 4 interest-free payments of $40.30 with

 or 

Instant online reading in your Booktopia eTextbook Library *

Why choose an eTextbook?

Instant Access *

Purchase and read your book immediately

Read Aloud

Listen and follow along as Bookshelf reads to you

Study Tools

Built-in study tools like highlights and more

* eTextbooks are not downloadable to your eReader or an app and can be accessed via web browsers only. You must be connected to the internet and have no technical issues with your device or browser that could prevent the eTextbook from operating.
Plural predication is a pervasive part of ordinary language. We can say that some people are fifty in number, are surrounding a building, come from many countries, and are classmates. These predicates can be true of some people without being true of any one of them; they are non-distributive predications. Yet the apparatus of predication and quantification in standard modern logic does not allow a place for such non-distributive predicates. Thomas McKay's book explores the enrichment of modern logic with plural predication and quantification. We can have genuinely non-distributive predication without relying on singularizing procedures from set theory and mereology. The fundamental 'among' relation can be understood in a way that does not generate any hierarchy of plurals analogous to a hierarchy of types or a hierarchy of higher-order logics. Singular quantification can be understood as a special case, with the general type being quantifiers that allow both singular and plural quantification. The 'among' relation is formally similar to a 'part of' relation, but the relations are distinct, so that mass quantification and plural quantification cannot be united in the same way that plural and singular are united. Analysis of singular and plural definite descriptions follows, with a defense of a fundamentally Russellian analysis, but coupled with some new ideas about how to be sensitive to the role of context. This facilitates an analysis of some central features of the use of pronouns, both singular and plural.
on
Desktop
Tablet
Mobile

More in Linguistics

The Miracle of Language - Richard Lederer

eBOOK

Burn This Book : Notes on Literature and Engagement - Toni Morrison

eBOOK

How to Write a Sentence : And How to Read One - Stanley Fish

eBOOK

Dictionary of American Slang - Barbara Ann Kipfer

eBOOK

RRP $21.99

$17.99

18%
OFF
The Writing of Fiction - Edith Wharton

eBOOK