Form and Function of Proper Names (original) (raw)
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ENGLISH ANTHROPONYMS AS PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS IN THE SYSTEM OF NOMINATIVE UNITS
The article confirms phraseological units where antroponyms are considered as main part. The purpose of the work is to analyze phraseological units with the components of forenames or surnames, their etymology and semantics. From the research was identified groups of phraseologies containing such anthroponyms like biblical, mythological, literal, legendary names which are relevant to the history of the England, US, Australia and other English speaking countries. Novelty of the article is seen in systematization of etymology and semantics of anthroponomical phraseologies.
Morphosyntactic coding of proper names and its implications for the Animacy Hierarchy
The Animacy Hierarchy (AH) is one of the most important generalizations in linguistic typology employed for the description and explanation of variations and splits in case marking and agreement in various grammatical domains. The AH is a combined person/ definiteness/ semantic animacy scale that gives clear preferences of certain morphosyntactic coding types over others. One claim of the AH is that proper names occupy an intermediate place between personal pronouns and common nouns. Despite the large body of research since its first extensive formulation in Silverstein (1976), it is astonishing to discover that there has been almost no empirical evidence published for this claim. The goal of this paper is to give an answer to the question whether the morphosyntactic coding of proper names in the languages of the world confirms or falsifies their hypothesized position within the AH. Since the AH has been formulated mostly on the basis of case marking and agreement phenomena in split ergative languages and languages with hierarchical systems, the authors compiled a sample of languages of this type (more than 30 languages) in order to find data that confirm or falsify the hypothesis. One of the results is that there are only a very few instances that confirm the hypothesis, and in addition that there are more instances that contradict the hypothesis. The authors came to the conclusion that proper names should be better taken out of the AH since this hierarchical position has no predictive value in typology.
Usage Sphere and Lexico-Stylistic Features of Anthroponomastics
Euro-Global Journal of Linguistics and Language Education, 2024
The article elaborates usage sphere and lexico-stylistic features of anthroponomastics. When the person names combine with toponyms, there appears a new term called "anthroponomastics". The article revealed that anthroponomastics mainly cover the names of villages, settlements, cities, streets or avenues, restaurants or cafes, markets or shops public buildings such as schools, universities, colleges, stations, museums, metro stations, hospitals, mosques, churches, etc. Public buildings are usually named after historical figures, poets, writers, musicians, academicians or scholars, presidents while shops or markets, cafes or restaurants are named after ordinary people depending on the willing and desire of citizens. The study underlines that there is a minute distinction between anthroponomastics and personification. In personification, human character and quality are transferred onto an inanimate object while only name is transferred onto place names in anthroponomastics. Besides, novel terms such as zooponomastics, vegeponomastics, aviaponomastics have also been compared with anthroponomastics in the article.
The Property-theoretical, Performative-nominalistic Theory of Proper Names
Dialectica, 2000
This paper embeds a theory of proper names in a general approach to singular reference based on type-free property theory. It is proposed that a proper name “N” is a sortal common noun whose meaning is essentially tied to the linguistic type “N”. Moreover, “N” can be singularly referring insofar as it is elliptical for a definite description of the form the “N” Following Montague, the meaning of a definite description is taken to be a property of properties. The proposed theory fulfils the major desiderata stemming from Kripke's works on proper names.
Between Singularity and Generality: The Semantic Life of Proper Names
Although the view that sees proper names as referential singular terms is widely considered orthodoxy, there is a growing popularity to the view that proper names are predicates. This is partly because the orthodoxy faces two anomalies that Predicativism can solve: on the one hand, proper names can have multiple bearers. But multiple bearerhood is (prima facie) a problem to the idea that proper names have just one individual as referent. On the other hand, as Burge (1973) noted, proper names can have predicative uses. But the view that proper names are singular terms arguably does not have the resources to deal with Burge's cases. In this paper I argue that the predicate view of proper names is mistaken. I first argue against the syntactic evidence used to support the view and against the predicativist's methodology of inferring a semantic account for proper names based on incomplete syntactic data. I also show that Predicativism can neither explain the behaviour of proper names in full generality, nor claim the fundamentality of predicative names. In developing my own view, however, I accept the insight that proper names in some sense express generality. Hence I propose that proper names - albeit fundamentally singular referential terms - express generality in two senses. First, by being used as predicates, since then they are true of many individuals; and second, by being referentially related to many individuals. I respond to the problem of multiple bearerhood by proposing that proper names are polyreferential, and also explain the behaviour of proper names in light of the wider phenomenon I called category change, and shown how Polyreferentialism can account for all uses of proper names.
Form, meaning and reference in natural language. A phenomenological account of proper names (2000)
In my book Eigenname und Bedeutung (1996) I started from the observation that modem theories of proper names fail to do justice to the specific and complex semantic nature of proper names. Since the 1960's and 1970's, theorizing about proper names has been dominated largely by scholars working in the traditions of analytic philosophy and logic, in particular John R. Searle and Saul Kripke. I urged, therefore , that the highly specific kind of meaning characteristic of proper names should be studied within a theory more in touch with general linguistics proper. The main philosophical (especially referential) and logical (especially formal) accounts start from the assumption that a proper name is "backed up" by encyclopedic information held by speakers of the referents (Searle), or that a proper name is a meaningless , yet rigidly designating sign (Kripke). In contrast to these views, I argue that a general linguistic definition of proper names must focus, not only on logical and philosophical issues, but upon the intra-linguistic semantic function of the proper name as " a part of speech" in actual utterances. This approach has nothing to do with "discourse analysis", but aims at describing proper names and appellative nouns as categories of speech in language use, bringing into play afunctional focus on proper names that has largely been lacking in definitions so far. An outline of a semantic theory of proper names is then proposed based on some aspects of a "phenomenology of language and linguis-tics" as found in the work of Edmund Husserl and Eugenio Coseriu. Roughly speaking, Husserl represents the general epistemological implications of the paper, Coseriu its specifically linguistic aspects.
Syntactic Features of Proper Names: The Generativist Approach(es) to Properhood
Voprosy onomastiki, 2018
The paper presents an overview of the generativist approaches to the syntactic analysis of proper names which are only very little known in the field of onomastics. The authors start with the general outline of basic theoretical ideas of generative grammar pertaining to the syntactic nature of words and phrases, the nature of the determiner phrase, and the main issues of transformational semantic syntax. The authors further proceed to present the cornerstone theories related to proper names within the generativist paradigm: Giuseppe Longobardi’s idea of proper names as determiner phrase projections, followed by Hagit Borer who elaborated a detailed analysis of nominal functional sequences; Ora Matushansky’s analysis of constructions of naming and nominating, and its critique by Alexandra Cornilescu. The overview leads the authors to conclude that, although generativism does not offer a unified syntactic theory of proper names, in some respects it can be a more promising theoretical framework than constructivism which now constitutes the basis for the modern “pragmatic” theory of properhood. Unlike constructivism, generativism considers proper names as a part of universal grammar seeking for explanations that would have crosslinguistic relevance. However, the approaches discussed in this paper clearly demonstrate the contribution of the syntactic environment to the interpretation of a noun as a proper or common name, which is a strong argument in favour of the “pragmatic” theory of properhood. The authors show that the generativist framework may also be used in the future for creating a more comprehensive description of some specifically proprial syntactic constructions.
2008
This book is not just a synthesis of previous work but provides a number of insights and claims that are either entirely new or result from substantially reworked and extended existing papers of mine in such a way that the content of this publication hopefully constitutes a consistent and coherent piece of work. I would also like to mention that this work has interdisciplinary traits in that not only language philosophical but also psychoand neurolinguistic studies have been made use of. In addition, dialinguistic, i.e. diatopic, diachronic and sociolinguistic (socio-onomastic) insights have been provided. (p. vii) This volume, in fact, represents the first comprehensive analysis in English of the proper name since the publication of Algeo's (1973) On Defining the Proper Name. The data in the present volume, however, derive from both Dutch and English (p. 119). In his brief general introduction (pp. 1-5), VL reinforces the commitment noted in his foreword that this research project is an interdisciplinary analysis of names that starts from the point of view of linguistics, but which also includes philosophical, neurolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and dialinguistic perspectives (p. 1). Furthermore, this volume considers an amplified domain of proper names that goes beyond the more traditional prototypical names such as first names, surnames, and place names. Rather, it includes a discussion of building names, trade names, and brand names (Carroll, 1985; Stewart, 1953; Eichler et al., 1995, 1996) to name but a few. The ambitious agenda of this comprehensive descriptive, theoretical, and primarily synchronic study of names includes the following significant points: (1) the semantic and syntactic status of proper names; (2) an attempt to establish a boundary between proper names and personal pronouns, and appellatives (common nouns); (3) a typology of proper names on the basis of semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic considerations; and (4) a presentation of socioonomastic theories and descriptions (p. 1). In the first chapter ('Nominal and referential semantic status of proper names', pp. 6-118), the longest of the entire book, VL seeks to provide a unified theory of proper names through an integrated semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic account, which is not an easy task, as evidenced by www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua