Preliminaries

Chapter 1 puts forth some preliminary considerations about our actual (that is, not fictional) use of language. In particular, it motivates the relevance of singular terms for the Radical Fictionalist approach to fiction, it sketches a picture of the semantics of proper names, and it discusses the ideas of empty names and gappy propositions. This chapter also explains some of the terminology employed in what follows, in particular the distinction between fully-fledged expressions (such as proper names) and expression-types (such as mere name-types). The final section focuses on the contentful effects achieved by the use of language and introduces the idea of impartation, one of the central concepts in the Radical Fictionalist approach to fiction.