Subject and Predicate in Western Logic Author(s): Jean van Heijenoort Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol.

24, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 253-268 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1398382 . Accessed: 21/03/2011 13:57
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lean van Heijenoort Subject and predicate in Western logic

A convenient and frequently used landmark in the study of languages is the decomposition of the sentence into subject and predicate. The landmark, however, is not always as clear and distinct as one may wish. The purpose of this article is to attempt to make the landmark more precise, rather on the logical plane than on the grammatical or linguistic planes, and, when this is done, to draw attention, by way of contrast and for a better understanding of the topic, to systems of logic or modes of thought where the sentence is not decomposed into subject and predicate. The investigation will be limited to Western logic, but it is hoped that its results may be of some use in studies outside of that tradition. In approaching the problem of subject and predicate one is in danger of saying too much or too little. Too much-in the sense that one finds oneself confronted with questions that range over grammar, linguistics, logic, and ontology. Too little-in the sense that the true scope of the topic cannot be revealed if one limits oneself to special points. In the framework of the present article I will probably end up by saying too much and too little. But, for all its dangers, I will nevertheless embark upon an enterprise that I deem necessary today. First, to forestall possible misinterpretations, I should state that I use the words subject and predicate for linguistic objects, in a natural or in a formalized language. The various uses of the subject-predicate analysis seem to cluster around three senses: (1) subject and predicate are singled out by criteria that belong to grammar (and here I mean surface grammar); (2) the subject refers to an individual and the predicate is an expression holding or not holding of that individual; (3) both subject and predicate refer to properties (terms in Aristotelian syllogistic, or, sometimes, universals). Of (2) there is a variant in which the predicate refers to a property (or a relation). Here I shall not discuss at all sense (1), except for a few brief remarks. In the sentence (1) 'Nobody came'

a grammarian would see in 'nobody' the subject and in 'came' the predicate, while a logician would, in the same sentence, see no subject, and he would not consider (1) to be of the subject-predicate form. Examples could be multiplied to show that these two activities diverge. In (2) 'John is taller than Peter'

the grammarian sees 'John' as the subject, while the logician counts two subjects, 'John' and 'Peter'. I shall not examine here whether the subject-predicate decomposition of

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the sentence is a well-grounded and useful grammatical notion. I will merely observe that, in grammar, the decomposition subject-predicate has often been replaced by the decomposition subject-copula-predicate or the decomposition subject-verb-complements (of various kinds). A more modern grammatical analysis of the sentence, into noun phrase and verb phrase, is perhaps closer to the logical subject-predicate decomposition. But I want to leave the plane of grammar and place myself on that of logic. I shall begin by making the proposal that the subject-predicate distinction be used, in logic, only in sense (2). Senses (2) and (3) are so different, from the logical and ontological points of view, that I see no benefit at all in tagging them with the same words. This proposal is, in a sense, a rescue operation, and it is not certain at all that it can succeed. 'Subject' and 'predicate' have a long history, and it is perhaps too late to pull them out of that historical humus in order to give them a meaning suitable to a precise logical and ontological analysis. I shall, of course, have no quarrel with anyone who wants to abandon these two words to their historical past. He will simply have to bring in new words for 'subject' and 'predicate' in the logical and ontological discussion that I shall conduct. A denoting expression is a linguistic object (a sentence part) that denotes (names, refers to, identifies) an object (an individual, a particular). A predicating expression is a linguistic object (a sentence part), provided with an appropriate number of places, such that, when each of these places is filled with a denoting expression, we obtain a sentence. This sentence is true if and only if the predicating expression holds of the object(s) denoted by the denoting expression(s) used in the construction of the sentence. When a sentence is obtained in precisely this manner, it is said to be of the subjectpredicate form; the denoting expression(s) used in the construction of the sentence is (are) its subject(s), and the predicating expression used is its predicate. In the sentence (3) 'Socrates is wise'

the subject is Socrates, which is a denoting expression naming a certain person, and the predicate is the predicating expression '. . . is wise', which holds of this person, if (3) is taken to be true. In (2) the subjects are 'John' and 'Peter', each being a denoting expression naming a person, and the predicate is '. . . is taller than . . .', which is a predicating expression holding of these two persons, taken in the appropriate order, if and only if (2) is true. Many sentences are not of the subject-predicate form. 'There is a prime number between 15 and 18', as interpreted by modern logic, would be written (4) 3 x(x is a prime number & 15 is less than x & x is less than 18)'.

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We have here two denoting expressions, '15' and '18', that name, respectively, the numbers 15 and 18, and we have two predicating expressions, '. . . is a prime number' and '. .. is less than . . .'. But sentence (4) is not of the subject-predicate form for the very reason, among others, that here we have more than one predicating expression. The sentence is obtained by application of the existential quantifier to the linguistic object (5) 'x is a prime number & 15 is less than x & x is less than 18'. This in turn is built up, by conjunction, from the three parts: (6) (7) and (8) 'x is less than 18'. 'x is a prime number', '15 is less than x',

These sentence parts are built up from a predicating expression, . . . is a prime number' or '. . . is less than . . .', by filling the places with denoting expressions, '15' or '18', or with the variable x. So (6), (7), and (8) themselves are not of the subject-predicate form, as defined above, since x is not a denoting expression. To simplify matters, by leaving out the conjunction, consider the sentences (9) and (10) '3 x(x is a prime number)'. '17 is a prime number'

The first is of the subject-predicate form, while the second is not; it is built up from (6) by existential quantification. But (6) is not a sentence; it is a shadow of a sentence. It starts by saying that '. .. is a prime number' holds of x, but then, since 'x' names no object, nothing is asserted. However, in (10), 'x', left dangling in (6), is caught by the quantifier. The two occurrences of the same ', in '3 x' and 'x is a prime number', permit a cross-reference. In (9) the subject, '17', identifies an object that is already in the hearer's stock-in-trade of objects, and then (9) says of that object that it is a prime number. In (10) the quantifier, '3 x', asserts the existence of an object, and then the remaining part of (10), that is (6), says of that object that it is a prime number. So, while (10) is not of the subject-predicate form, (6) may be counted as being of that form, albeit in a somewhat extended sense. There is an important difference between (9) and (10) in the manner in which an object is placed in our focus; in (9), by the use of the subject, '17', the speaker identifies an object which is in the stock-in-trade common to both

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speakerand hearer; in (10) the speakerinformsthe hearerof the existence of an object. But then we proceedsimilarly.That is why, though recognizing that there is here a certainextension,we consider (6) to be of the subjectform. predicate The last three paragraphsstipulate, rather than explain and justify. They certainlyraise many questions,some of which will be discussedbelow. Our stipulations,however,will providea useful frameworkfor discussinga number of problems.The first of these is historical, it is the connection betweenAristotle'ssyllogisticand the subject-predicate analysis. It is todayfairlywell-known that Aristotle'ssyllogisticdoes not rest on the of the sentence,as it has just been presented.' subject-predicate decomposition The prime sentences of Aristotle's syllogistic can be written in the forms 'Auv', 'Euv, 'Iuv, and 'Ouv, where 'A', 'E', 'I', and '0' are four constants (which, for the time being, will be called operators), and 'u' and '' are variables terms (oQog).In the first seven nonuniversal rangingover nonempty chaptersof Book I of the Prior Analytics, where the syllogistic doctrineis presented,there is not one example of an argumentinvolvingan individual. In the balanceof the work there are few, very few-perhaps two or three -fleeting uses of proper names of persons in examplesthat could be considered to be of the subject-predicate form. In the first chapter of Book I of the Prior Analytics,where Aristotle lists the forms of the sentencesthat can be premisesin a syllogisticargument,he does not mentionthe subjectpredicateform (in our sense). This form simply does not belong to his
syllogistic.2

Aristotle, however, cannot be said to have been unaware of that form. The Categoriescan be considereda partly successfulattempt to single out what the subject refers to, the individual,and then to make a classification of what can be said of that individual.So, on one hand, Aristotle has, in the Categories,the distinction,in an assertion,between the individualreferred to and what is said of that individual,a distinctionthat underliesthe logical of the sentenceexpressingthe assertion; on decomposition subject-predicate the other hand, he has his syllogistic,where, in the prime assertions,something is said of two terms, which both stand for propertiesor sorts, hence are at the same type level, and where, consequently, the sentencesare not form. of the subject-predicate The situationis somewhatsurprisingand would deserve an explanation. to such an explanation:Aristotle's Here I shall simply suggest an approach strike. his had the luck to hit upon a part of logic was He lucky syllogistic are where quantifiers unnecessary. Syllogisticdeals with one-placepredicates and, as such, is part of monadicquantification theory.It is well knownthat a can be translated-with no loss at of monadic with logic quantifiers system Booleancalculus.The reason is that a formulaof all-into a quantifier-free

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monadic logic (with some unessential restriction on the sentential connectives used) can always be rewritten so that there is no intermeshing of quantifiers, that is, so that no variable bound by a quantifier lies in the scope of another quantifier. The situation changes completely as soon as we have a two-place predicate. It is this special feature that allowed Aristotle to develop a logic without quantifiers, hence without prime sentences in the subject-predicate form. Quantifiers together with prime sentences in the subject-predicate form make up a more complex fine structure, which was unnecessary for what he undertook to do. And Aristotle was consistent on that point. In proofs by ecthesis, he introduces, to conduct his demonstration, a new term (corresponding to a new property), alien to the premises, which is a bit strange, rather than adducing an argument involving objects, that is, the individuals to which the terms already introduced apply. Thus, in a sense, Aristotle was carried away by the success of his quantifier-free syllogistic. This new doctrine was far from covering the whole field of logic; many questions and problems were left aside. The very success of Aristotle in developing the syllogistic created, for him, an unbalanced view of logic. (Later on, the tradition took Aristotle's syllogistic for the whole of logic; but for that Aristotle is not responsible.) One of the problems of logic that never came to the center of Aristotle's attention is the relation between the subject-predicate form of sentences strongly suggested by the Categories and the form of the primitive sentences in the syllogistic (Auv, and so on). There is, however, a remarkable passage in Aristotle where a connection between the two forms is touched upon. In the Prior Analytics, I, 1, 24b, lines 29-31, he writes: "We say that one term is predicated of all of another [this is Aristotle's standard way of speaking of 'Auv'] whenever no instance of the latter can be found of which the former cannot be asserted." Now, we can follow this sentence word by word and transcribe it into the notation of contemporary logic; we thus obtain: 'Auv' for '~ 3 x(u(x) & -v(x))' (which, we know, is another way of writing 'Vx(u(x) D v(x))'). Here we are back to a situation in which we have individuals, of each of which a property is asserted or denied. The operator 'A', which, like 'E', 'I', and '0', is generally treated by Aristotle as primitive, is here defined, and is brought back into the sphere of the individual-property distinction, or, on the syntactic plane, of the subject-predicateanalysis.3 We can only speculate about what would have happened if Aristotle had developed this insight. Armed with quantifiers, he could have broken through the limitations of monadic logic. And perhaps a Greek version of the Begriffsschrift would have been written twenty-two centuries before Frege. The point remains: it is because Aristotle could dispense with quantifiers that he could also dispense with the subject-predicate form of sentences.

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And when, in his Begriffsschrift, Frege introduced quantifiers, he was thus compelled to make the subject-predicate form the unique form of his prime sentences. Frege is generally credited with having introduced, to get full quantification theory, the generalized subject-predicate form, that is, the one in which there is more than one subject. This is true. But it is also true that he was making more than a generalization of something already existing. He was putting the subject-predicate form squarely at the basis of logic, both in its generalized (more than one subject) and in its simple (just one subject) versions.4 Not all sentences, as logically parsed by modern logic, are of the subjectpredicate form. We have conjunctions, disjunctions, negations, existential and universal quantifications. But the subject-predicate form has, in modern logic, taken a primordial role, in two closely connected ways. First, all atomic sentences are of the subject-predicate form, with the subject places possibly occupied by variables that are subsequently captured by quantifiers. Second, the semantic of that logic requires a domain of individuals to which are attached properties and relations. Aristotle's syllogistic, which ignores the individual and deals directly with various connections between sorts, has its prolongation, not in quantification theory but in systems that now deal with relations, and not simply monadic sorts, but still attempts to make do without bringing in individuals: the Peirce-Schr6der calculus of relatives, the Russell-Whitehead theory of relations, Tarski's cylindrical algebras, Bernays' extension of the relation calculus, and Quine's predicate-functor logic. These systems have remained marginal. Combinatory logic, in many of its aspects, also escapes the subject-predicate form. The definitions we have given earlier of subject and predicate raise several questions; in fact, we are here at a focal point from which, in every direction, we face a philosophical problem. The denoting expression that serves as subject can fulfill its role of identifying an object by a variety of devices; it may be a proper name or a definite description; it may have to rely on linguistic context and/or nonlinguistic circumstances. On the linguistic plane, subject and predicate have more points of contact than the radical difference in their roles would imply. Some linguistic objects, the general terms so called, are used for constructing, together with other words, both predicating expressions and denoting expressions. The general term 'dog' gives the predicate '... is a dog' and the subject 'the dog' (as in 'the dog is barking'). General terms have no specific role assigned to them until they are integrated in an expression that becomes subject or predicate. It is perhaps this dual role of general terms that has contributed to blurring the logical distinction between subject and predicate (both of these 'apply' to something, are 'about' something). Two totally different functions, that of identifying an object

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and that of sorting an already identified object, are reflected in two words, 'the' and 'a', both articles, one definite, one indefinite, which, on the plane of grammar, do not always behave very differently. True enough, 'the' fulfills its role of identifying an object with the help of a linguistic context or attending nonlinguistic circumstances: 'the dog we saw yesterday' or 'the dog', when both speaker and hearer know which dog is being talked about. The ways in which, in discourse, a linguistic expression plays the role of subject, that is, identifies an object, are subtle and flexible, in constant interplay with the context and the circumstances. Since the identification function can be fulfilled with meager and varying linguistic equipment, and since so often so much is understood but not said (sous-entendu, French), we have here an additional factor that has contributed to dimming the distinction between subject and predicate and has fostered the use of the same words for what we have earlier called senses (2) and (3). On the other hand, predicating expressions yield subjects. With each predicating expression there are associated one or several expressions that can, in a sentence, play the role of a subject. With '. . . is wise' there is associated 'wisdom', and also 'to be wise' and 'being wise'. With '... is red' there is associated 'the color red', 'red', also 'redness'. With '. . is a horse', 'horseness', 'equinity', 'to be a horse', and 'being a horse'. The procedure followed for associating such an expression with a predicating expression is not uniform. Some of these expressions are perfectly natural and currently used, some are artificially created. Some are part of the predicating expression, as 'red', in 'red is pleasant', is a part of '. . . is red'. Some, like 'wisdom', 'horseness', and so on, are formed with various suffixes. Perhaps a uniform procedure would consist in using the words 'property' or 'relation': 'the property of being a horse', 'the property of being bitter', 'the relation of being taller than', and so on. A question about such abstract singular terms, as they are sometimes called, is whether they are dispensable. (11) 'Blue is pleasant'

can be taken as a paraphraseof (12) 'V x(x is blue D x is pleasant)'

And similarly for other abstract singular terms. The reduction seems more difficult when we have quantification over properties, as in 'he had all the qualities of a great general'. Quality talk suggests a hierarchy. On the first level we have individuals (Socrates, John, Peter, and so on). On the level above we have qualities of these individuals (wisdom, modesty, cowardice, and so on). Then there are predicating expressions that do or do not hold of these qualities ('. . . is desirable', '. . . is rare', '. . . is more important

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than ..

.', and so on), and we reproduce, on a new level, the subject-

predicateform of sentences: 'wisdom is desirable',and so on. We could, in fact, pass to a new level with new subjects: 'desirability', 'rarity', 'the
greater importance of . . . over . . .', and so on. The theory of types, in

contemporary logic, provides a codificationfor an indefinite extension of such a hierarchy.But natural languages offer hardly more than embryos of hierarchies. The problemof discerningin a language a comprehensive hierarchyof that of isolatinga domainof ground-level types containsa first subproblem: objects, the domainof individualsthat subjects identify. Paradigmsfor individualsare persons and materialobjects: Socrates,this table, all the philosopher'sexamples. But these paradigmsare perhaps not as clear as one may wish. The notion of a person, though fairly stable in extension, has a complexintension(mind and body) and is perhapsnot too well suited to be a paradigm.In 'John is tall' and 'John is wise' are the predicatingexpressions holding of the same subject? As for materialobjects, there we have the questionof vaguenessand problemsof identification. Are these material objects: a house, a street, a region? How do we count as one object clouds, waves, and so on? Then, what is a materialobject: a cloud of molecules,a ? complexof sensations We could perhapsadopt the physicist'slanguageand thus limit ourselves to his objects,the elementaryparticles.But the languageswe speak are not in these languageswe argue,reason,deduce, gearedto that, and, nevertheless, that is, we have a logic independent of the physicalistreduction.And, to be mean to the physicist,are not some of the elementary particlesso evanescent that they hardly qualifyas objects, without speakingof more technicalrea? sons like quantum-theory statistics endeavorto try to attach the ground-leveldomain It is a commendable of individualsto the continuumof space and time in which we live. But we should not expect to find a prelinguisticindividuation of this world in objects. We should ratherlook at functions,two functionsof the mind, whose workingis intimatelyconnectedwith the use of language.The role of the first functionis to identify elementsof the world to be countedas objects, of identification with their principles and reidentification. The secondfunction introducescriteria for being of the same sort, the same kind; it classifies. Perhapsthe order in which we just presentedthese functionsis misleading: we alwaysidentifyinsidean alreadyestablished classification, throughfurther 'the classifications: white dog we saw yesterday'.As opposedto the definite the true propername,if there is such a thing, plays a minorand description, derivativerole. Then, through the sentence in the subject-predicate form, the identifiedobject is classified:'The white dog we saw yesterdayis mad'.

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To take care of relationswe have to extend appropriately the scope of the secondfunction. However importantpersons and material bodies may be for our notion of object, they do not exhaust it. We conduct coherent discourse about qualities, classes, moods, feelings, numbers, actions, taxes, illnesses, and countless other things. We may wield Occam'srazor and cut through that jungle. We may dreamof a reductionist's languagewith a neatly delimited domainof ground-levelobjects. But the reductionist'sways are often tortuous, and the price may be too high-if indeed there is any ransomto be paid to reach the promisedland. The languageswe use are far from such a dream.In them there is a constanttug-of-warbetweenthe multiplication of entities and the sober discipline of not accepting more than necessary. And logic-quantificationtheory, sometimeswith a few levels of type theory -is appliedto them locally. In context, we fix our universe of discourse, and we have a local ontology: a domainof individualsto which are attached andrelations. properties now turn to the situationin which this kind of ontology, associated We with the subject-predicate form of a sentence, seems threatened.One such situationarises when so-calledmass terms are used. These terms are used for 'stuff': water, gold, soup, and so on. They seem ill fitting in the subjectpredicateframework. They have the peculiarityof jumpingover the copula: 'this is water', but also 'water is a fluid'; 'this ring is gold', but also 'gold is a metal' or 'gold has contaminated this transistor'.They resist pluralization (except in peculiar cases) .

When mass terms, together with 'is', are used in a predicate position (paradigm:'this ring is gold'), their role is close to that of a predicating expression; we could even say 'this ring is made of gold' or 'this ring is golden', and then we would have authenticpredicatingexpressions.Grammatically,however,there is somethingdeviant. 'Gold' is a substantive,not an adjective.When a substantiveis used to form a predicatingexpression, the indefinitearticle is used: 'this ring is a masterpiece';when there is no article, the predicatingexpression is formed with an adjective: 'this ring is precious'.With 'gold' we have a substantive without article, and this construction,it seems, is reserved to mass terms. In French or Spanish, we would also use a construction specificto mass terms: 'cette bague est en or',
'este anillo es de oro'. Note the use of 'en' and of 'de'. All these linguistic

peculiaritiesshould warn us of the special behaviorof mass terms. When a mass term is in the position of a grammaticalsubject with no article (in English), two cases have to be sharply distinguished.Paradigmatic for these two cases are, respectively,'gold is a metal' and 'gold has contaminated this transistor'.Shouldwe compare'gold is a metal'with 'Peter

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is a Belgian',making'gold' the name of a (scattered) object? Shouldn'twe since both have the character rathercompareit with 'the whale is a mammal', of a universallaw that does not presupposeexistence? On the other hand, this transistor'certainly has an existential import; 'gold has contaminated this transistor'or we could say just as well 'some gold has contaminated this transistor'.However, even 'there is some gold that has contaminated that of which the existenceis assertedis not a specificpiece of gold; it is at best a certain amount of gold, which seems too shapelessto qualify as an individual.We would have genuine individualsif we were to talk of the the transistor; but then we would be gold atoms that have contaminated language. usinganother Mass terms can be used in the positionof a subjectwith the definitearticle: 'the gold in this ring comes from an ancient jewel' or the equivalent 'this ring's gold comes from an ancient jewel', 'the water in this pool is or polluted', (13) 'the coffee in this cup is cold'.

Here we seem to have individuals:'the gold in this ring', 'the water in this pool', 'the coffee in this cup'. But can we go all the way? Can we quantify? Canwe pass from (13) to (14) '3 x(x is coffeein this cupandx is cold)'?

and the reason is that, We certainlyfeel uneasy about such a quantification, whenwe have
(15) '3xGx'

we are able to say that there are one, two, or more x's such that Gx. We can count. For stuff terms, we shouldperhapsinvent a new kind of quantifier.8Let us note that ordinarylanguagegets over the difficulty.(14) can be read: (16) 'thereis coffeein this cup and it is cold'.

as we wouldin We use the personal pronoun (17) 'thereis a bookon the deskand it is blue'.

Our qualmsabout (14) would perhapsbe pacifiedif we could introducean wordandsay individualizing (18)
or (19)

'the amountof coffeein this cup is cold' 'the quantityof coffeein this cup is cold'.

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But 'amount' will not do, since we can have the same amount of coffee without having the identical molecules; 'quantity', proposed by Helen Morris Cartwright, is not unobjectionable. To say (20) 'this cupful of coffee is cold'

would, of course, be saying something else if the cup is not full of coffee. We have here a situation where the mass term when used with the definite article can, up to a certain point, be treated as a denoting expression, but not completely. Note also the situation with the plural. If I speak of the book in your room and of the book in my room, I can then speak of the two books, or of the books. But from 'the water in your glass' and 'the water in my glass' I can hardly pass to 'the two waters' or 'the waters'. Expressions like 'the water in the glass' function like logical pseudo-subjects. When mass terms are used with words indicating shape or naming containing implements, they may yield genuine denoting expressions: 'this bit of gold', 'this heap of dirt', 'this spoonful of soup', 'this bucket of water', and so on. Here we have individuals, and there is little to say. But these shape-indicating or 'container' words may also function as units, and then we have no individuals. 'This barrel contains ten buckets of water' does not mean that ten buckets of water have been put into the barrel one by one, the barrel may very well have been filled with a hose. Units of all sorts (cubic yards, grams, and so on) do not isolate individuals. There are not twenty-three individuals in a twenty-three-milligram bit of gold as there are twenty-three individuals in a pack of twenty-three dogs. Linguistically, mass terms can be characterized, in English, as much-terms, as opposed to many-terms. Let us consider the following table, which establishes a correspondence between expressions: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) men-water many men-much water more men-more water fewer men-less water few men-little water a number of men-an amount of water a set of men-a bit of (?) of water

We can make a number of remarks about this table. (1) It yields a number of substitution rules that preserve grammaticality, for instance, through (b), in addition to changing the verb from plural to singular, we can pass from 'there are too many men' to 'there is too much water'. Through (e), we can pass from 'very few men' to 'very little water'. Through (f), we pass from 'a small number of men' to 'a small amount of water'. These substitution rules, which are quite mechanical, have precise

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limits of application: we cannot use (a) to transform 'each of these men'. The rules and the conditions of their application seem to be a worthwhile topic of study for linguistics. (2) In (c) we have 'more' on both sides, while in (d) we have 'fewer' on the left side and 'less' on the right side. Thus, in (c), the difference between many-terms and much-terms has vanished. This is an example of a linguistic peculiarity that is insignificant. Some linguistic details, even minute, can be extremely important and tell a lot to him who can "read" them; others have no significance. (3) 'Amount' does correspond to 'number', not to 'set'. I propose 'bit' as the analogue of set (both are monosyllabic words ending with 't'!). (4) The distinction between much-terms and many-terms would vanish in French: 'beaucoup d'hommes-beaucoup d'eau', 'peu d'hommes-peu deau', and so on. This does not mean that the French language ignores mass terms. The distinction is simply established by other means (the partitive forms). See the end of remark (2) earlier. The fact that the distinction can be based on quite different linguistic means shows its philosophical significance. An interesting and philosophically important linguistic fact is that abstract terms, which we have briefly discussed, are much-terms: prettiness, courage, cowardice, bitterness, salinity, and so on. This should warn us that the grammar of mass terms is far from being a negligible sideshow. Mass terms, just like object terms, have their paradigmatic core and then progressively wander far afield. We start thinking of stuff in connection with material substance: water, gold, dirt, soup. We then proceed to matter, energy, electric charge. We also embrace the abstract terms originating in a predicating expression: courage, salinity, freedom.7 Mass terms, one may claim, are dispensable. Stuff is composed of molecules, and each of these of atoms; we then have individuals. We can only repeat here what we have said above about a physicalist reduction: we are shifting to another language, but the problems of the original language remain. And, moreover, what is an atom made of? In some radical way the atomic view of the world does not eliminate the stuff ontology, but gives it its most pregnant form. The review we have made of the linguistic roles of mass terms shows that there is a complex interplay between, on one hand, mass terms and, on the other, denoting expressions and predicating expressions. It shows also that there is no reduction here. Linguistic realities can be pushed up to a certain point, but then they resist. We cannot squarely fit mass terms into the subjectpredicate form, with its companion ontology of individuals. It seems more natural, instead, to recognize that there is, beneath our language, a stuff ontology, coexisting with, but different from, the ontology of individuals. This stuff ontology asserts itself in many linguistic facts.

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However they may differ on the role of mass terms, Strawson and Quine agree on one point: mass terms represent a primitive, archaic survival of a preparticular level of thought. Quine bases his view on an assumed psychology of the baby. And, although he recognizes the many difficulties of the enterprise, he tries to fit mass terms into the subject-predicate framework. This view is certainly open to question. Stuff talk is an important part of our language, parallel to object talk. One could even claim that stuff talk corresponds to a higher level of thought. Stuff lends itself to measurement and thus leads to magnitude. In the scientific development of mankind, sortal talk has yielded to magnitude talk. The sortal words 'heavy' and 'light' have been replaced, in scientific discourse, by the notion of weight. Stuff talk leads to magnitude talk, hence to the mathematical view of the world achieved by modern physics. Mass terms are only one example of words that ill fit the subject-predicate form and suggest another ontology. There might be other classes of words in a similar situation. 'It', in 'it is raining', is a grammatical subject used to grammatically cast into the subject-predicate form a sentence which is obviously not of that form. 'It' in 'it happens that . . .' plays a similar role. Rather than embark on the quest for a logical subject, we should perhaps see here samples of event talk and, beneath, such talk, look for an event ontology. Although a one-place predicate is just a special case of a many-place predicate, the more frequent use of one-place predicates led to a certain grammatical form that became dominant, and by a sort of grammatical contamination to an alleged logical form: in (2) 'John' came to be considered as the logical subject and ' . . . is taller than Peter' as the predicate. This is sheer grammatical laziness. There is a certain grammatical inertia that limits the number of grammatical forms and bends the logic. To spare new grammatical constructions, relation talk molded itself into the form of property talk. Stuff talk, in turn, molded itself into the individuals-sorts talk, and only linguistic irregularities betray the presence of an alien ontology, stuff ontology. Similarly for event talk. At this point, however, an important difference has to be faced. Modern logic was able to unbury relation talk beneath property talk and thus to create quantification theory, in which a one-place predicate is recognized as a special case of a many-place predicate. No such unburying has taken place for stuff talk. Quite the contrary. In today's logic, quantification theory, the ontology of individuals has become exclusive: first, in the subject-predicate form of its prime sentences and, second, in its semantic, based on a domain of individuals to which are attached properties and relations. Thus quantification theory brings out, in its pure form, the main ontology of the natural language, at the expense of every other. Stuff ontology had no

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similar logical crystallization. There has been, one could argue, some attempted systematization of it in pre-Socratic thought or in Hegel's 'concrete universal'. But these have remained marginal. The true systematization of stuff ontology has been in modern physics. 'Matter', 'energy', we have already noted, are mass terms; 'mass' itself, of course, and countless other words. Thus have emerged magnitudes, which with the mathematization of physics, came to be expressed by the real numbers of analysis, which constitute the so-called continuum. But we turn full circle with the arithmetization of the continuum, when the real number system is to be defined in logical terms. We are back to the ontology of individuals. The topic of subject and predicate in a nexus of philosophical problems. We have not discussed all of them but have nevertheless left to our inquiry a rather broad scope, in order to promote discussion here. Our first task has been to clarify the logical roles of subject and predicate: the subject identifies an object, the predicate sorts objects. We have recalled that the prime sentences of Aristotle's syllogistic are not of the subject-predicate form, in the sense we have adopted. We have shown that modern logic is thoroughly based on the subject-predicate analysis, both by the form of its prime sentences and by the ontology of its semantic. But there are, in the Western-European languages, words, like mass terms, that suggest another ontology (or is it a naive physics?). At the beginning of his well-known "Speaking of Objects," Quine says: "We talk so inveterably of objects that to say we do so seems almost to say nothing at all." And then he asks: "How else is there to talk?" By considering schemes in which we do not talk of objects, we begin to see by contrast that, after all, we say something when we do so. In his search for the 'else' Quine comes to imagine temporal segments of rabbits, undetached parts of rabbits, local manifestations of rabbithood ('rabbiteth'). With less imagination and perhaps more attention to the natural languages, we have been looking for the 'else' in some of the ordinary ways in which we speak, and there we found features that escape an ontology of individuals. Some systematized languages, like Aristotelian syllogistic or theoretical physics, also escape that ontology.
NOTES

1. It may seem paradoxical to say that Aristotle's syllogistic ignored the subjectpredicate form of sentences, while many modern philosophers reproach Aristotle with precisely having locked logic inside this form. It is, of course, a question of stipulations. But a point which is not arbitrary is the following: the grammatical criteria for subject and predicate, as well as Aristotle's occasional uses of 'subject', in his syllogistics, are unimportant and uninteresting for logic, while our stipulations single out a basic form of assertion, the ascription of a property to an individual or the holding

of a relationbetweenindividuals.

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2. The use of 'subject' ('1Coxeiegvov') is much less frequent in Aristotle's logical writings than translations would suggest A commonly used English translation of the Prior Analytics gives 'about some subject' while the Greek is 'xcar twvog'(I, i, 24a, 16-17); the same translation gives 'the affirmation or negation of some predicate of xacta TLvoS' some subject' for 'xoct&aYo g jdat6qpacoC TWvoS (I, i, 24a, 29-30). Although English translationsare replete with unjustified occurrencesof 'subject' (and 'predicate'), the fact remains that Aristotle occasionally uses 'Jt0oxLtE1ivov' for the first term of a statement. He needs a convenient expression to distinguish the first term from the second in his atomic sentences (Auv, Euv, Iuv, and Ouv). 3. The Greek text of the sentence upon which this discussion is based is perfectly clear and offers no textual problems (except for a possible interpolation of 'Tou in line 30, which would not change the meaning). The situation is not Uj3OXeLLvou' the same with the preceding sentence. Although its text is well established, it can be interpretedin two different ways. The text can be rendered thus: 'Auv' [here we have Aristotle's standard expression for this form] for 'one being in the whole of the other'. The first interpretation,given in all printed translations I have seen (and in Alexander of Aphrodisias's commentary) is that 'one' corresponds to u and is the subject in Aristotle's sense, and the 'other' correspondsto v and is the predicate; but, then, Aristotle should have said 'the whole of the one being in the other'. The second interpretation, suggested to me verbally by G. E. L. Owen, is that 'one' corresponds to v, the predicate,and 'one being in the whole of the other' should be read as 'one being attached to the whole of the other'. The first interpretationcomes close to a class interpretation of 'Auv' and is quite interesting, but it does violence to the Greek syntax, unless one assumes that we are confronted here with a somewhat perverse expression that was part of the philosophicaljargon of Aristotle's circle. The second interpretationrespects perfectly the Greek syntax, but then one may wonder what Aristotle means, he seems to be saying the same thing twice in different words. 4. In his Begriffsschrift, Frege states that 'a distinction between subject and predicate does not occur in my way of representinga judgment'; but, from the examples he adduces (active and passive form of sentences), it is clear that what he has in mind is the purely grammaticaldistinction. He also imagines a language which "would have only a single predicate for all judgments, namely, 'is a fact.' We see that there cannot be any question here of subject and predicate in the ordinary sense. Our ideography is a language of this sort, and in it the sign is the common predicate for all judgments." Here Frege jumps to the metalanguage to reestablish the traditional grammatical distinction. Let us mention here that one can attempt to regain the logical subject and predicate in Aristotle's syllogistic by the following stratagem. The prime sentences of the syllogistic are of the forms 'Auv', 'Euv', 'Iuv', and 'Ouv. Now 'A', 'E', 'I', and '0' are considered to be constant two-place predicating expressions, and u and v are considered to range over a population of terms. The attempt succeeds on the syntactic plane but fails on the semantic one: it would require an ontology in which we have the property of being humanbut in which Socrates is not there. 5. It is sometimes adduced, as a further peculiarity of mass terms, that they 'resist articles' (Quine). This is a parochial feature of English. In other languages the so-called partitive article may be used, and there is a subtle interplay between the definite and the partitive articles, which, in English, is bulldozed and whose significance is far more than grammatical.'Lor est un metal' and 'de lor a contamine ce traisistor' correspond to two different uses of a mass term in the position of a grammaticalsubject. Moreover, there are in English perfectly good uses of mass terms in subject position with the definitearticle: 'the coffee in this cup is cold'. 6. It will not do to pass from (13) to '3r(( is the coffee in this cup and x is cold)'.

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The point of introducingthe existential quantifieris to dissolve the definite article. Try to quantify over 'some gold' in 'some gold has contaminatedthis transistor'. 7. Some terms may be parasitic both ways. 'Democracy', especially written with a capital D, becomes a subject, even a feminine figure: 'Democracy will win'. But in 'there is little democracy in this country' it functions as a mass term. Examples can be multiplied. REFERENCES Aristotle's syllogistic: Lukasiewicz, Jan, Aristotle's Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic, 2d ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1957. Patzig, Giinther,Aristotle's Theory of the Syllogism, J. Barnes, trans., Synthese Library, 1968. Quine, W. V., "Predicate-functorlogic," in Proceedings of the Second Scandinavian Logic Symposium,ed., J. E. Fenstad, 1971,309-315. Mass terms: Cartwright, Helen Morris, "Quantities,"in The philosophicalreview 79 (1970): 25-42. Laycock, Henry, "Some Questions of Ontology," in The philosophicalreview 81 (1972), 3-42. Quine, Willard Van Orman, Word and Object, Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1960. Strawson, P. F., Individuals, an Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, London: Methuen, 1959.