On this type of approach, neither the concept of the many, nor the use of plural expressions, calls for modification to the doctrine that whatever is, is one.
His interpretation spells out the truth clauses for the second-order quantifiers in terms of plural expressions, without invoking classes.
For to say that a sentence incurs a commitment to a plural entity is just to say that the truth of the sentence requires there to be some semantic value of the sort appropriate to plural expressions.
Some 'pluralists', as we may call those who analyze mass expressions in terms of plural expressions, hold that mass terms are used, generally, to refer to many things at once (Nicolas 2002).
Both mass and plural expressions take the definite article since 'the' "does not discriminate between singular and plural" (Laycock 2006, p. 35).
In some of his early work Laycock makes arguments by analogy to support the proposal that mass expressions are veiled plural expressions, so that water, in its analysis, gets treated like apples or Hobbits does.
According to the Fregean tradition, which connects the notion of ontological commitment to that of a semantic value, this will mean that plural expressions incur commitment to plural entities, much as predicates incur commitment to concepts.
It's not clear why both water and lions get a plural reference treatment, yet the referents of mass expressions get to retain some kind of ontological halo which distinguishes their referents from non-mass plural expressions.
Why is the plural of American "Americans" but our plural of Japanese not "Japaneses"?
He understands the plural reality of Spain," says Mr Maragall.
The plural morphology of German is characterised by five different plural allomorphs (- e)n, -e, -er, -s, zero), partly combined with changes in the vowel (umlaut).
