A Case Against the Linguistic Approach to Metaphysics Zeno Vendler’s Project and Beyond

There are two approaches to metaphysics that concern language,the logical and the linguistic. Zeno Vendler,who took the linguistic one,distinguished with transformational techniques between two semantic categories,namely fact and event,and regarded them as corresponding respectively to a metaphysical category of beings. In doing this he presupposed that independent semantic categories could be sorted out,and corresponding categories of beings that are independent of language can be derived. But our analysis of Vendler’s case shows that it is not semantic categories but grammar that functions in differentiating event and fact. At least some semantic categories could not be separated from grammar,and this casts doubt on the linguistic approach to metaphysics. If semantic categories are not independent of grammar,we could not derive metaphysics from linguistic study.