The phrase "a genuine singular" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that is truly unique or one-of-a-kind in a specific context.
Example: "Her artwork is a genuine singular, unlike anything I've ever seen before."
Alternatives: "a true original" or "a real standout".
Nor can one entertain a genuine singular thought about it.
The answer is that a definite description, under Russell's theory, is not a genuine singular term; it is not even a meaningful unit.
Even if the deep form of 'Ronald McDonald does not exist' is 'It is not the case that [Ronald McDonald exists]', assuming that 'Ronald McDonald' is a genuine singular term, the problem remains of finding in reality some entity to serve as the designation of 'Ronald McDonald'.
Yet, given John Buridan's claim that a spoken term cannot be called universal or singular unless it corresponds to a universal or singular concept, we must have singular concepts if we have any genuine singular terms.
Because the truth of (5) guarantees the truth of (13), and indeed any belief sentence resulting from the substitution of a co-referring genuine singular term, it would appear that (5) (as well as (13)), is syntactically de dicto and semantically de re.
Still, "Songs From the Second Floor," an example of an unsung genre, is a heartbreakingly thoughtful minor classic, the work of a genuine and singular artist.
Frege and Russell, by contrast, take the same sentences to demonstrate that those expressions are not genuine singular terms at all and that negative existentials all have a general form, asserting the noninstantiation of a property.
As already noted, the Fregean must discover syntactic criteria for identifying genuine singular terms in ordinary language.
If this is to serve as a criterion of ontological commitment, there must be some purely syntactic way of determining which expressions are genuine singular terms; if genuine singular terms are characterized semantically for example, as expressions that refer to objects when they occur in true extensional sentences then the account of ontological commitment goes in a circle.
But recent work (especially Dummett (1973) and Hale (1996)) has given some reason to think that genuine singular terms in English can be recognized syntactically in terms of their inferential role.
Our example uses the ordinary proper name 'Frida'; but Russell himself thought that such names were not genuine singular terms, and denied that public objects ever got into Russellian contents.
