Quine's considered view was that his criterion of ontological commitment cannot be applied to theories couched in ordinary language.  Before applying the criterion, the theory must be paraphrased into first-order predicate logic (without names); and then, strictly speaking, it is only the first-order theory that carries ontological commitment, not the ordinary language theory. [37]  (The proponent of the theory can be convicted of holding the ontological commitment if—and only if—she accepts the paraphrase.) For Quine, this view reflected his general approach to ordinary language and ontology: the speakers of ordinary language, typically, are not ontologically serious; it is the task of philosophers, not ordinary folk, to determine which prima facie commitments are genuine. There were also specific reasons why a direct application of his criterion to ordinary language might lead to erroneous results. For one thing, theories couched in ordinary language containing non-extensional constructions might have ontological commitments not revealed by quantificational structure (see §1.7.3). For another thing, quantification in ordinary language might fail to carry ontological commitment if it is not objectual, not amenable to the standard Tarskian model-theoretic semantics  (see §1.6.2). Only the quantifiers  of first-order logic, Quine held, are guaranteed to be objectual (because we stipulate their semantics); and only objectual quantification carries ontological commitment.[38]