| Sumario: | Should objects count as necessarily having certain properties, despite their not having those properties when they do not exist? For example, should a cat that passes out of existence, and so no longer is a cat, nonetheless count as <italic>necessarily</italic> being a cat? In this essay I examine different ways of adapting Aldo Bressan’s ML so that it can accommodate an affirmative answer to these questions. Anil Gupta, in <italic>The Logic of Common Nouns</italic>, creates a number of languages that have a kinship with Bressan’s ML, three of which are also tailored to affirmatively answering these questions. After comparing their languages, I argue that metaphysicians and philosophers of language should prefer ML to Gupta’s languages in most applications because it can accommodate essential properties, like being a cat, while being more uniform and less cumbersome.
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