 As mentioned in  Section 1.3,  the view that referential NPs stand for objects is not uncontroversial. It has been the target of critique particularly by Chomsky (1986; 1995; 2013), who put forward various challenges to the traditional notion of reference as a relation to “real” objects in a mind-independent reality. These are for the most part cases of inconsistent property ascriptions that objects on standard views would not be able to bear. For example, what we refer to as a “door” could be painted, replaced, and walked through, properties that could not be attributed jointly to material objects as standardly understood. Another example Chomsky gives is a home, which unlike a house may have peculiar combinations of properties: one can own or sell a home, but not, for example paint a home. Other examples are cities, which can be destroyed and rebuilt at a different location, artifacts, which can undergo complete replacement of their parts, and persons with their relative independence of the bodies. Even terms like water, Chomsky (1995) argues, do not stand for an external substance, but are individuated in part by their roles in people’s lives. For example, water can be polluted but not H2O. Moreover, Sprite has the same percentage of H2O as tap water, but one would not call it water, water being individuated by function, not just chemical composition.