Names of Institutions

Abstract

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxvi1.10 This paper advances the thesis that the proper names of some institutions, such as the names of universities, heads of state and certain positions or agencies, inherit the linguistic types of the nouns which denote the basic category of the objects that the names refer to, e.g., “university”, “school” or “company”. A reference by those names may select particular aspects of institutions, in the same way that “city” or “book” selects the physical, legal or informational aspects of objects in the extension of the nouns. This view is based on Asher’s and Pustejovsky’s conception of dot-type semantics.

Keywords

• names of institutions
• dot-type semantics
• many aspect-words
• direct reference