Relationships and events: Towards a general theory of reification and truthmaking

We propose a novel ontological analysis of relations and relationships based on a re-visitation of a classic problem in the practice of knowledge representation and conceptual modeling, namely relationship reification. Our idea is that a relation holds in virtue of a relationship's existence. Relationships are therefore truthmakers of relations. In this paper we present a general theory or reification and truthmaking, and discuss the interplay between events and relationships, suggesting that relationships are the focus of events, which emerge from the context (the scene) they occur in.