ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the semantic behavior and treatments of plural terms and collective noun phrases. The semantics of plurals and collective nouns should be of interest to those working on collective intentionality more generally for at least two reasons. First, we will see that two sorts of formal semantic treatments have been developed to capture varieties of plural predication. The first involve a predicate taking a singular group-like entity as argument, while the second involves taking some individuals (as many rather than as a group) as argument. Choice of treatment or superiority of one over the other may have ontological ramifications for debates about collective intentionality and action. Second, the apparent truth of certain sentences is sometimes used as evidence for the existence of some feature. For example, “The Spurs are disappointed to have lost to the Clippers” might be used as evidence for the view that a corporation or a team can have emotions. Looking more closely at the semantics and plurals of collective nouns may increase one’s understanding of the support (or lack thereof) linguistic data can offer.
