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Which quantifiers can occur in "there BE" sentences, and what do they have in common?

I've figured out that there are strong quantifiers like most, all, every, both; and there are weak quantifiers like a, some, five, many.

Strong quantifiers express porportion in relation to a background set.

Weak quantifiers introduce new entities into discourse.

But, I don't see what strong and weak quantifiers have in common. I don't understand the principle that unites the concept of "there BE" quantifiers.

2006-12-16 13:19:50 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities Philosophy

Thank you! If you were able to answer my question, I'd appreciate it if you'd look at the other questions I'm asking today!
(There's no good Yahoo category for Semantics or even Linguistics...)

2006-12-16 13:20:03 · update #1

1 answers

I don't see one either.
Universal quantification doesn't require that an object exists for the claim to be true, while existential quantification does.

"All griffons have wings" given the null set, still seems true.
"A griffon exists" is false, however, provided the same extension.

Here is the old breakdown, anyway:
"For all x, if x is a an A, then x is a B" is equivalent to
"There does not exist an x such that x is both not A and B"

But there's no way to translate "There exists an x" into anything universal without predicating existence.

2006-12-16 15:47:13 · answer #1 · answered by -.- 3 · 0 0

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