Fictional Objects

The article, in the first part, aims at providing a positive answer to the ontological question about fictional objects starting from semantic reflections on the negative existential statements containing terms purporting to refer to such objects and the principle of compositionality. In the second part is proposed a Meinongian account of ficta, showing how it handles the problem of negative existentials without giving up neither the principle of compositionality nor our way of talking about fictional characters in the natural languages. It is also considered a particular kind of Meinongianism, namely Modal Meinongianism which seems to be the best Meinongian theory in order to explore the modal properties of ficta.