categorematic

The modern view in question is characterized in terms of what may be called "the thesis of onto-semantic parallelism," which states that the primitive (indefinable) categorematic concepts of our semantics mark out the primary entities in reality.

In this regard, it must be pointed out that when I say 'metaphysics' I am referring with Agamben to determined linguistic structures such as pronouns or grammatical shifters (indicators of enunciation) more properly known as categorematic expressions, which isolate the self-referentiality of language because they refer to nothing other than the taking place of language itself.

I take it, though, that any theory of meaning employed will apply to both classes of expression (syncategorematic and categorematic).

Primitive (absolute) terms are acquired first in experience and semantically complex (connotative) terms are formed by combining primitive categorematic terms with syncategorematic terms according to the same recursive procedures which explain how mental sentences or thoughts are constructed.

Accepting an infinity of things, but not infinite wholes, amounts, Leibniz goes on to say in the New Essays, to accepting a syncategorematic infinite but not a categorematic one.(15) It is infinite only in a negative sense, the original etymological sense of the word: it is unlimited, and consequently not finite.

These puzzles concern a species of categorematic terms in mental language, Ockham's absolute terms, and are not unlike the puzzles about proper names in Kripkean semantics.

A third is the verb "to be" as a lexical item (a "categorematic term") in its own right with its proper significate, "God is." The first two senses of "to be" are, logically speaking, syncategorematic; that is, they presuppose other represigns to complete their signification in any given case.