 The Abstract-Objects Hypothesis goes against the widely held belief that reference to abstract objects in natural language is rampant  (§1.6).  Based on a range of semantic and syntactic generalizations, Moltmann (2013) argues that this view is mistaken: what appear to be expressions in the core of natural language, referring to abstract objects (numbers, properties, propositions, degrees, expression types) are in fact expressions referring to particulars, pluralities of (actual or possible) particulars, or variable objects, or else they are expressions that fail to have a referential function in the first place (numerals, clausal complements, predicative complements, complements of intensional transitive verbs). The particulars comprise tropes, including quantitative tropes (John’s height) and number tropes (the number of planets) (see entry on  tropes).  Only in the periphery, so the view, is reference to abstract objects possible, for example through the use of reifying terms such as the number eight, the property of being happy, the word “happy”, or the proposition that it is raining. Thus, the view is that in its core, the ontology of natural language displays a form of trope nominalism (see entry on  nominalism in metaphysics).