The polysemy of proper names Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna
Philosophical studies,
11/2023, Volume:
180, Issue:
10-11
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Proper names are usually considered devices of singular reference but, when considered as word-types, they also exhibit other kinds of uses. In this paper I intend to show that systematic kinds of ...uses of proper names considered as word-types can be accounted for by a generalized rule-based conception of systematic polysemy, one which not only postulates a multiplicity of stable senses for an expression, but also a multiplicity of content generating rules, each of which determines potentially different contents in different contexts. In contrast to the currently extant polysemous conceptions of proper names (Leckie in Philos Stud 165:1139–1160, 2013), which only encompass individual and predicative uses, the presented proposal concerns all systematic uses of proper names considered in the literature, i.e., individual, predicative, deferred, descriptive, anaphoric, and bound uses of proper names. The resulting conception accommodates referential intuition about the default individual uses of proper names while also admitting other kinds of uses without generating homonymy. It transpires that proper names are semantically underdetermined and context-sensitive expressions.
This theoretical paper gives an overview about how proper names and different name types exist in the mental system, also showing new solutions provided by the cognitive perspective in connection ...with old questions of name theory. Cognitive onomastics is a relatively new approach to the study of proper names based on a cognitive approach to language. In this framework, names as linguistic elements are parts of the cognitive system, thus mental representation and usage of proper names can be described by general cognitive processes. The overview of topics and directions of cognitive onomastic research shows that studying names and naming in a cognitive framework has a lot of potential. Providing further evidence of the advantages of the cognitive approach, the paper discusses two controversial issues of name theory. First, the meaning of proper names is addressed from a cognitive perspective, pointing out the complex meaning matrix of this word class; then the categorization of proper names is discussed, i.e., how the networks and subnetworks of names emerge within the mental lexicon.
The article is an attempt to employ the lexical-semantic reconstruction by Professor Vincent Blanár, whose 100th birthday the authors commemorate, to help us understand the cultural legacy of the ...past. The core of the text is a retrospective view of the names of areas with occurrence of Pre-Slavic material culture and an attempt to identify the motivating lexical units of the oronyms
and their derivatives from the territory of today’s Slovakia by means of interconnected knowledge from the fields of linguistics and archaeology. Proper names such as
occurred as late as in Slavic cultural and linguistic environment; however, material evidence at places with such names suggests presence of an older culture, i. e., settlement by population of a different cultural, social or linguistic provenance. In this study, the lexical-semantic reconstruction of the common noun
in its original meaning as the motivating linguistic unit for oronyms such as
and their derivatives is reflected in the mirror of archaeological research. In connection with the sites named
in the regions of Gemer, Malohont, Novohrad or Hont in the south of Central Slovakia, the authors state that from the aspect of archaeology, they are at least remarkable places of the cultural landscape in which we can expect finds from various stages of prehistory and protohistory. The authors also emphasize that in the studied cases, this is not an absolute rule; it is rather a distinct signal of occurrence of archaeological finds.
There is consideration by most parents in giving proper names for their childrensuch as for expectation or praying. They use language varieties in supportingtheir expectations. This study ...Psychosociosemantically aims to elaborate propernames of IAIN (The State Islamic Institute) Surakarta. The problems of this studyare how are Psychosociosemantically the comprehension and reasons of givingthe proper names? And how are the formation of proper names? The method is a descriptive qualitative study. The writer conducts some descriptions in collecting the data, analyzing the data and getting some conclusions. The result of thestudy informs that in creating the proper names especially for students of IAINSurakarta, there is certain expectation and reason. Proper name is adopted fromthe name of certain people or character and created from certain event. Besides, itis also created from certain time (temporal) and certain place (spatial). The writerconcludes also that proper names are inspired from literary works title (especiallysongs title), kinds of profession, birth sequence, certain word formation, andfamily names. The forming of IAIN Students’ proper name is based on many ways,such as: formed from parents name combination, formed from father’s name,formed from mother’s name and formed from specific acronym.
There is consideration by most parents in giving proper names for their children such as for expectation or praying. They use language varieties in supporting their expectations. This study ...Psychosociosemantically aims to elaborate proper names of IAIN (The State Islamic Institute) Surakarta. The problems of this study are how are Psychosociosemantically the comprehension and reasons of giving the proper names? And how are the formation of proper names? The method is a descriptive qualitative study. The writer conducts some descriptions in collecting the data, analyzing the data and getting some conclusions. The result of the study informs that in creating the proper names especially for students of IAIN Surakarta, there is certain expectation and reason. Proper name is adopted from the name of certain people or character and created from certain event. Besides, it is also created from certain time (temporal) and certain place (spatial). The writer concludes also that proper names are inspired from literary works title (especially songs title), kinds of profession, birth sequence, certain word formation, and family names. The forming of IAIN Students’ proper name is based on many ways, such as: formed from parents name combination, formed from father’s name, formed from mother’s name and formed from specific acronym.
Recent research indicates that 6- to 9-month-olds understand a number of object words, but the nature of this understanding is unclear. This work examined whether infants restrict these terms to ...individual objects (like proper names) or extend them across multiple objects from a category (like common nouns). Experiment 1 reports evidence that 6-month-olds comprehend the name for their mother (e.g., “Mommy”) as restricted to the individual person. Experiment 2 offers support for the claim that 6- and 9-month-olds understand both a label that is restricted to an individual person (e.g., “Mommy”) and a label that extends to multiple members of an object category (i.e., “hand” or “ball”). Experiment 3 provides evidence that 12- to 15-month-olds comprehend both a word that is restricted to an individual (e.g., “Fido”) and a word that extends to multiple category members (e.g., “dog”) for the same object (i.e., a pet dog). The findings indicate that infants understand both individual- and categorical-scope words early in development, suggesting that neither lexical type represents a privileged starting point in word learning. We propose that cross-situational learning abilities, along with intuitive biases to conceptualize objects from particular semantic classes as either individuals or members of categories, play a role in infants' learning of words of the two lexical types.
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