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Ideas for 'works', 'Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects' and 'Aspects of the Theory of Syntax'

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2 ideas

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 1. Syntax
Chomsky's 'interpretative semantics' says syntax comes first, and is then interpreted [Chomsky, by Magidor]
     Full Idea: Chomsky and his followers (whose position was labelled 'interpretative semantics') claimed that a sentence is first assigned a syntactic structure by an autonomous syntactic module, and this structure is then provided as input for semantic interpretation.
     From: report of Noam Chomsky (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax [1965]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 1.3
     A reaction: This certainly doesn't fit the experience of introspecting speech, but then I suppose good pianists focus entirely on the music, and overlook the finger movements which have obvious priority. But I don't know the syntax of the sentence when I begin it.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 3. Predicates
We can accept Frege's idea of object without assuming that predicates have a reference [Wright,C]
     Full Idea: The heart of the problem is Frege's assumption that predicates have Bedeutungen at all; and no reason is at present evident why someone who espouses Frege's notion of object is contrained to make that assumption.
     From: Crispin Wright (Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects [1983], 1.iv)
     A reaction: This seems like a penetrating objection to Frege's view of reference, and presumably supports the Kripke approach.