'Reference to Properties in Natural Language'. In A. Fisher and A.S. Maurin (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Properties, in press.

Abstract: After a short, perspectival overview of the semantics of potential property-referring terms, this paper presents new and surprising generalizations about explicit property-referring terms like 'the property of being wise', which raise fundamental issues regarding ontology and learnability and a core-periphery distinction in natural language ontology.