Full Idea
Determiner uses of number words may disappear on analysis. This is inspired by Russell's elimination of the word 'the'. The number becomes blocks of first-order quantifiers at the level of semantic representation.
Gist of Idea
We might eliminate adjectival numbers by analysing them into blocks of quantifiers
Source
Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §2)
Book Reference
-: 'Philosophical Review 114' [Phil Review 2005], p.183
A Reaction
[compressed] The proposal comes from platonists, who argue that numbers cannot be analysed away if they are objects. Hofweber says the analogy with Russell is wrong, as 'the' can't occur in different syntactic positions, the way number words can.