Fara 2015a, b) are committed to the following two theses: 1) proper names are count nouns in all their (literal) occurrences (the syntactic aspect of predicativism), and 2) names do not refer to objects but express (non-relational) name-bearing properties (the semantic aspect of predicativism). The main motivation for predicativism is to provide a uniform explanation of referential names and predicative names. According to predicativism, predicative names are fundamental and referential names are explained by appealing to a null determiner functioning like "the" or "that." This paper has two goals. The first is to reject the predicativists' explanation of the two types of names (Section 2). I present three syntactic counterexamples to the predicativists' account of referential names: incorporation, modification, and measure phrase uses. The second goal is to present a novel strategy to explain the two types of names (Section 3). I propose that referential names are fundamental but that there are null morphemes available for transforming a name into a count noun (and possibly into other syntactic categories). Predicativism and Hidden DeterminersIn the semantics of proper names, 1 predicativism is the view that names are count nouns in all their (literal) occurrences. Predicativism is mainly aimed at providing a uniform account 2 (that is, one without appealing to lexical ambiguity) of the following two types of names (Jeshion 2015a):(1) Stella is inside the museum. (Referential Names)(2) Two Stellas are inside the museum. (Predicative Names) Predicativists generally claim that names express name-bearing (or meta-linguistic) properties.For example, according to predicativists, "Stella" expresses the property of being called "Stella," being named "Stella," bearing the name "Stella," or being given the name "Stella" by a certain naming convention, etc. Referential uses like (1) are explained by positing a covert determiner that functions like "the" (e.g. Fara 2015b), "that" (e.g. Burge 1973), or an idiosyncratic one 3 (e.g. Gray 2017). Using "Stella" to refer to a particular Stella is just like using "the cat" or "that cat" to refer to a particular cat. So, the logical form of (1) is like (3):(3) [Øthe/that Stella] is inside the museum.However, the predicativists' account cannot be extended to other data because it is not 2 Fara (2015a) says that the uniformity principle that she is guided by is Grice's "Modified Occam's Razor." Modified Occam's Razor: Do not multiply senses beyond necessity (Fara 2015a, p.273). But Fara does not specify when multiplying senses is necessary. Without further qualification on when it is necessary, this principle gives rise to a counter-intuitive consequence.According to the standard versions of referentialism in which names are treated like individual constants in logic, a name (e.g. "Stella") is ambiguous in as many ways as it has bearers. Is it desirable to avoid this kind of ambiguity? Bach (2015) and Schoubye (2017) seem to think so. Also, Modified Occam's Razor seems to say so. Bu...

Forthcoming in SyntheseThis paper concerns a debate on the syntactic structures of deontic "ought"s. There are two debates on this topic. The first concerns whether epistemic and deontic "ought"s are associated with different syntactic structures. The second concerns whether two different senses of deontic "ought"s -"ought-to-do"s and "ought-to-be"sare associated with different syntactic constructions. 1 This paper focuses on the second debate. Some philosophers and linguists have embraced what has been called the ambiguity view, according to which deontic "ought"s are ambiguous between a propositional operator and a relation between an agent and an action/proposition. 2 The main goal of this paper is to present some new negative evidencewhat I call the intensionality testagainst the ambiguity view. I'll treat (1a−c) as non-normative. I'll focus on (1d−f), which express clearly normative readings of "ought." The prudential "ought" roughly means that it is best for the agent's interest that s/he performs some action, so (1e) can be paraphrased as "It is best for John's interest that he stops smoking." The ethical "ought" roughly means that the agent is obliged, or has most reason, to do some action. (1f) can be paraphrased as "John is obliged not to kill innocent people." The evaluative "ought" roughly means that it would be good for a certain event to happen (or for a certain state to obtain). ( 1d) conveys something on a par with the claim that it would be good for there to be world peace. (1d) can be true even if it is practically impossible to obtain world peace. Among these readings, (1e−f) seems particularly important to moral philosophers. This is because (1e−f) are agential in the sense that they describe some action that the agent ought to do. On the other hand, (1d) is non-agential or situational in the sense that it just expresses a desirable state of affairs that ought to be the case.More specifically, Schroeder (2011) suggests five hallmarks of deliberative "ought"s (= "ought-to-do"s) and each reading can be examined in light of these hallmarks: (i) deliberative "ought"s matter directly for advice (MacFarlane & Kolodny 2010). When someone comes to you with the question of what to do, if you know what s/he deliberatively ought to do, you know what is advisable for him/her. (ii) Deliberative "ought"s close practical deliberation (Ross 2010). If you know what one deliberatively ought to do, then that settles the question of what to do. (iii) Deliberative "ought"s are closely related to the notion of accountability (Broome 2013). If an agent S deliberatively ought to do some action X, S is accountable if S fails to perform X. (iv) The deliberative "ought" implies

Generics, which are often expressed using bare plurals (e.g., "Tigers are striped"), have received much attention from both philosophers and linguists. 1 But generics have proved resistant to systematic semantic theorizing. This is mainly because generics can be used to express propositions with radically different quantificational forces: that of universal quantifiers (e.g., "all"), modalized universal quantifiers (e.g., "all … can," "ideally, all," "under normal circumstances, all"), proportional quantifiers (e.g., "most," "many"), and quasi-existential quantifiers (e.g., "a few"). Nguyen (2020) calls this data The Variety Data, but we prefer to call it The Positive Data: 2The Positive Data (The Variety Data) 3,4 (1) [A few] mosquitoes transmit malaria. 51 For broad introductions to the literature on generics, see Krifka et al. (1995), Leslie (2016), and Sterken (2017). 2 In the absence of an explicitly supplied context, we will assume typical contexts. Bach (2002) and Bach (2005) have argued that in the absence of an explicitly provided context, speakers evaluate sentences by imagining a typical one. Some evidence that speakers can automatically supply a typical context is the felicity of some sentences containing context-dependent expressions despite the absence of any explicitly offered context. For example, "She left Bob" can be understood as meaning "Bob's female ex-partner left Bob" despite the lack of any explicitly offered context to help resolve the reference of "she." 3 Only the unbracketed material is overtly pronounced. The bracketed material indicates the quantificational force of what is asserted. 4 Here are sample lexical entries for the quantifiers in the positive data: ⟦"all"⟧ c = λF. λG.