Quotation of types and other types of quotation
T HE type/token distinction, apparently a simple one, is beset by worrisome difficulties, and attempts to give an account of types have been plagued by confusion. A suggestion of Hugly and Sayward [11] that types are classes has been successfully rebutted, in my opinion, by Peter Simons [17], but Simons' preferred theory, a pattern approach to types, also seems unsatisfactory. In this note, I shall first register some complaints about Simons' theory, then present an alternative account of type-talk which, I claim, is simpler and more general in that the type/token distinction falls out as a special case. Simons proposes the convention of using single quotation marks to name types, double quotation marks to name patterns, the Greek letters ?, 7 as place-holders for names and p?, i as place-holders for predicate letters. A single expression may exemplify several different patterns. Thus, any token of 'Faa' exemplifies all of the patterns "Faa", "Fa ", "F a ", "F q", "F )9 4", "?paa ", "rpa ", "p44 a ", "96 t9",