On the ontology of branching quantifiers (Q2639049)

Hintikka, Barwise and others herald a logic of branching quantifiers as apt for certain English sentences which standard first-order logic cannot handle. Quine opposes this logic on global theoretical grounds but grants its first-order status: supporters and critics alike see the apparent quantifiers in its novel arrays as ranging over ordinary objects. Here it differs from a logic universally agreed to be isomorphic with it, whose existential quantifiers range over functions. But I argue that no autonomous logic of branching quantifiers is in sight, and indeed that what look like ordinary quantifiers in the branching arrays have no legitimate claim to that status.