Full Idea
For Frege it is the syntactic category which is primary, the ontological one derivative.
Gist of Idea
The syntactic category is primary, and the ontological category is derivative
Source
report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884]) by Crispin Wright - Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects 1.iii
Book Reference
Wright,Crispin: 'Frege's Conception of Numbers' [Scots Philosophical Monographs 1983], p.13
A Reaction
I take the recent revival of metaphysics to be a rebellion against precisely this thought. Ontology disappeared for a hundred years into a hopeless miasma of linguistic complexity. Language is cludge, but the world isn't.
Related Idea
Idea 13877 Singular terms in true sentences must refer to objects; there is no further question about their existence [Wright,C]