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178836

(2019) Anton Marty and contemporary philosophy, Dordrecht, Springer.

Determining and modifying attributes

Jan Claas , Benjamin Schnieder

pp. 59-96

This paper investigates the distinction between determining and modifying expressions that played an important role in the Brentano School. The focus lies on how the distinction is applied to adjectives by Anton Marty and Kazimierz Twardowski. In "heavy gun', "heavy' plays a determining role: heavy guns are guns; in "fake gun', "fake' plays a modifying role: fake guns are no guns at all. According to Marty and Twardowski, when a modifying adjective is combined with a noun, it shifts the meaning of the noun. This paper rejects this proposal and proposes a better account which was developed by Bernard Bolzano: the difference between determining and modifying adjectives must be understood in terms of how their meanings figure in meaning analyses of adjective-noun combinations.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-05581-3_4

Full citation:

Claas, J. , Schnieder, B. (2019)., Determining and modifying attributes, in G. Bacigalupo & H. Leblanc (eds.), Anton Marty and contemporary philosophy, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 59-96.

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