  Prior was convinced that no satisfactory metalinguistic analysis can be given of sentences having the general modal form ‘It is — that \(p\)’. In Formal Logic he wrote: ‘It is quite plain, for example, that I am not talking about the sentence “Socrates is dead” when I say “I wish that Socrates were dead”’ (1955a: 219). In Time and Modality he reiterated the point, now in connection with the tenses: ‘“Professor Carnap will be flying to the moon” … is quite obviously a statement about Professor Carnap, and quite obviously not a statement about the statement “Professor Carnap is flying to the moon”’ (1957: 8).