The Semantics of Plurals

Abstract

Plural logic provides an appealing framework for the regimentation of natural language plurals. However, the choice of a regimenting language leaves wide open the semantic question of how this language should be interpreted. One option is to interpret a plural term as denoting a non-empty set. Another is to embrace plurals in the metalanguage and take a plural term to have plural reference. A detailed comparison of the options reveals that there is no simple solution to the problem of choosing among them.