Abstract
In this paper I provide novel arguments for the predicative approach to proper names, which claims that argument proper names are definite descriptions containing a naming predicate (the individual called X). I first argue that modified proper names, such as the incomparable Maria Callas or the other Francis Bacon cannot be handled on the hypothesis that argument proper names have no internal structure and uniformly denote entities. I then discuss cases like every Adolf, which would normally be interpreted as every individual named Adolf and show that the predicative approach to proper names can straightforwardly account for the distribution of a detectable naming component in proper names. Finally, I address the issue of proper names used as common nouns (such as a Rembrandt or the new Madonna) and plural proper names (e.g., the Beatles) and demonstrate that they do not form a homogenous group yet can be clearly distinguished on both syntactic and semantic grounds from proper names involving a detectable naming component.
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Notes
I leave open the question of whether factors other than phonology (and in particular, spelling) should also be taken into consideration in the encoding of proper names (or indeed, common noun homophones, such as lie and lye), i.e., whether, for instance, Catherine and Katherine are the same name (cf. Izumi 2012:40).
Following Matushansky (2008), complex proper names are interpreted by Predicate Modification and no distinction is made between first names and surnames. While this is an obvious simplification, given that last names introduce, besides their metalinguistic content, the presupposition that there exist (or can exist) other individuals bearing that surname and belonging to the same family, pursuing the proper analysis would take us too far afield here. I thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to the need to clarify this point.
Izumi (2012:41) asserts without discussion that there is only one bearing relation, which is a semantic primitive. Since he does not address the interaction of proper name predicates with naming verbs, I can only speculate as to how he proposes to handle the compositional semantics of the naming construction. While it is distinctly possible that rather than saturating an argument slot in the proper name predicate, such verbs modify the bearing relation in question (along the same lines as those used in the neo-Davidsonian treatment of thematic roles), this solution would still require the bearing relation to be syntactically accessible, which is also the conclusion that the distribution of a detectable naming component, discussed below, will suggest.
In addition to the interpretation indicated above, the proper name in (20b) also has another one, which can be paraphrased as “Jerris Johnson when he was very drunk”. We set aside here these coerced uses of proper names, where the outcome denotes a spatial–temporal slice or an aspect of the entity bearing the proper name, as in (i):
For more discussion see Gärtner (2004), Gary-Prieur (1991), von Heusinger and Wespel (2007), Jonasson (2005), Paul (1994), Thomsen (1997). Other derived uses of proper names will be discussed in Sect. 4.
I set plural proper names aside here, since the presence and the choice of a determiner with them, as well as the ensuing interpretation, depends on the source of their plurality (e.g., the West Indies, which cannot appear either bare or in the singular form, vs. the Kennedys, which can). Illuminating discussions of plural proper names can be found in Van Langendonck (2007) and Jeshion (to appear)-a.
For the interpretation of indefinite specific proper names introduced by one of versus certain, see Hintikka (1986).
While the determiner no seems to be compatible with both the presence and the absence of a detectable naming component, the latter interpretation arguably results from coercion along the same lines as examples in footnote 4. Thus no Catherine can be analyzed as “no spatiotemporal slice of Catherine” (the “simple-constant” reading compounded with coercion), while no John Smith means only “no individual named John Smith” (the naming-predicational reading), as expected for a non-specific indefinite:
Note that the overt definite article is divorced in this representation from the iota operator. Given that definite predicates, such as the winner, are possible [see Rapoport (1987:177) for an early discussion and Fara (2001) for a recent one], such a separation is necessary anyway, making the definite article a marker of definiteness rather than its source. In Sect. 2.4 I will discuss the potential use of ident for nonrestrictive modification of proper names.
As a reviewer notes, it is also possible to appeal to the distinction (Kaplan 1973, 1989, 1990; Sainsbury 2013) between specific/common currency proper names (which denote individuals) vs. generic proper names (which is what is shared by the individuals bearing the same name). I will not address this approach, since it also offers no insight as to how the systematic link between a specific proper name and its generic counterpart is achieved—in other words, how the fact that David Kaplan is called David is derived.
Similar generalizations hold for languages with two definite articles or with preproprial definite articles: with a non-restrictive relative clause a weak or preproprial definite article can still be used, while a restrictive relative clause forces the appearance of the strong or regular definite article, respectively.
I used a Russian example to ensure that the proper name in question cannot be treated as a quotation; see the discussion of the instrumental (predicative) versus nominative (quoted) proper names in the complement of Russian verbs of naming in Matushansky (2008).
The definite article is possible in (58b) if (58a) means that I was introduced to one of the many Sandy Joneses and one of the many Robin Smiths present at that particular party. I hypothesize that in this case the definite article is akin to the strong definite article in Germanic (see Delisle 1988; Ebert 1971; Hartmann 1982; Schwartz 2009), which appears with “pragmatic definites” (cf. Löbner 1985).
I have replaced Jeshion's counterexamples with mine to allow for more natural minimal pairs that require no special context to be understood. My grouping is closer to Fara's (to appear) and is different from Jeshion's.
I follow Jeshion and Fara in not discussing measure unit eponyms, such as ohm, faraday, watt, etc., which have no semantic connection to the proper names that they are derived from. The fact that they do not fit into any semantic class is straightforwardly explained by their wholly artificial origin.
Proxy readings have also recently been invoked by Partee (2003) in order to reduce privative modification to an instance of coercion with subsective modification:
It is crucial that in the latter case the coercion process occurs at the kind-level, targeting what is syntactically an NP and semantically an entity (type e). It seems reasonable to extend this analysis to the proxy readings of common nouns in (67), thus assimilating kind names to proper names (cf. Kripke 1980).
An anonymous reviewer draws my attention to the behavior of gender in German painter-to-painter proper name uses. While the nouns Gemälde ‘painting’, Werk ‘work’, Bild ‘picture’ are neuter and Zeichnung ‘drawing’ is feminine, the following, naturally occurring creation use is masculine (like the painter).
That the creation use of a proper name does not simply inherit the gender of the creator is shown by the fact that creations of female artists behave differently: whereas for most speakers feminine is the only (less-than-perfect) option, some also allow masculine and yet others, nothing at all. While the mechanism of this gender conflict is unclear, what is obvious is that it would not be expected if the use of a proper name to denote a creation of its bearer had involved a meaning shift rather than derivation. Further support of this view comes from the fact that for music pieces, for instance, only mass nouns can be formed in German (Berit Gehrke, p.c.)—in other words, the process is lexically restricted for both its input and its output.
I hypothesize that the presence of versus absence of the definite article correlates with the two options available: anaphora to the coerced use in the first sentence requires the article (since it is essentially a common noun), but a true proper name can also be used to refer to a proxy of its referent and then no article is present. In other words, the optionality of the definite article in (74), but not in (73) depends on whether the proper name can be used to refer to the entity that is introduced by its indefinite use. The fact that the pattern is different for the naming-predicational antecedent in (58) suggests that the latter is not derived.
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Matushansky, O. The Other Francis Bacon: On Non-BARE Proper Names. Erkenn 80 (Suppl 2), 335–362 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9703-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9703-0