 A pattern repeatedly illustrated in recent sections is that of the defective noun that proves undeserving of objects and is dismissed as an irreferential fragment of a few containing phrases. But some times the defective noun fares oppositely: its utility is found to turn on the admission of denoted objects as values of the variables of quantification. In such a case our job is to devise interpretations for it in the term positions where, in its defectiveness, it had not used to occur. (Quine 1960, 257)