Referring to institutional entities: Semantic and ontological perspectives

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Arapinis, Alexandra

Affiliations: IHPST, CNRS, University Paris 1, ENS, Paris, France. E-mail: alexandra.arapinis@malix.univ-paris1.fr

Abstract: Focusing on the systematic polysemy of institution-denoting terms, this paper defends the general view that such multiple-meaning phenomena take root in the complex ontological structure of the denoted entities. This is pursued in the context of recent type-oriented theories of systematic polysemy, drawing on the common assumption that the types associated to the lexicon encode (at least in a simplified fashion) the metaphysical structure of the world. The starting point of the present paper is this: if it is natural to interpret the type structure as encoding a hierarchical classification of being in terms of species and genera partially ordered by subsumption relations, how are we to make metaphysical sense of complex types – dot-types in particular? What is the nature of the orthogonal dot-relations structuring such complex types, which, though central to the analysis of inherently polysemous words like institution-denoting terms, are yet conceptually poorly understood? The aim of this paper is to fill this gap through the ontological analysis of institutional entities, and to propose an interpretation of dots in terms of notions of ontological constant existential dependence and in particular ontological constitution. We will show that such an interpretation provides the required conceptual background to solve some semantic puzzles concerning the complexity of dot-types, furnishing a principled criterion for establishing which metaphysical information are clustered into such complex types, and explaining away a number of issues raised by co-predication. Overall, the approach adopted can be seen as a programmatic one aiming to make a first step in connecting the linguistic literature on systematic polysemy and the philosophical literature on social ontology.

Keywords: Social ontology, institutions, dependence, lexical semantics, systematic polysemy, dot-types

DOI: 10.3233/AO-130122

Journal: Applied Ontology, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 31-57, 2013