So‐called Neo‐Russellians, such as Salmon, Braun, Crimmins, and Perry, hold that the semantic content of ‘n is F’ in a context c is the singular proposition ⟨o, P⟩, where o is the referent of the ...name n in c, and P is the property expressed by the predicate F in c. This is also known as the Neo‐Russellian theory. Using truth ascriptions with names designating propositions, such as ‘Goldbach's conjecture’, in this paper, I will argue that, together with highly plausible principles regarding a priori knowledge, the Neo‐Russellian theory leads to unacceptable consequences. I will call this ‘the Goldbach puzzle’. Since the solution to the Goldbach puzzle cannot be to reject the discussed principles regarding a priori knowledge, the puzzle will undermine the Neo‐Russellian theory.
It is well known that difficulty in the retrieval of people's names is an early symptom of Alzheimer's Disease Dementia (ADD), but there is a controversy about the nature of this deficit. In this ...study, we analyzed whether the nature of the difficulty in retrieving proper names in ADD reflects pre-semantic, semantic, or post-semantic difficulties. To do so, 85 older adults, 35 with ADD and 50 cognitively healthy (CH), completed a task with famous faces involving: recognition, naming, semantic questions, and naming with phonological cues. The ADD group scored lower than the CH group in all tasks. Both groups showed a greater capacity for recognition than naming, but this difference was more pronounced in the ADD group. Additionally, the ADD group showed significantly fewer semantic errors than the CH group. Overall results suggest that the difficulties people with ADD have in naming reflect a degradation at semantic level.
This paper is a conceptual supplement sui generis, the aim of which is to present a modified treatment of proper names and deproprial expressions in the
(ADCC). The focus of the study is both a ...reflection on the past and current lexicographical practice and a discussion of the key issues related to the treatment of the respective lexical subsystem in the dictionary. First, we summarize the basic facts concerning the lexicographic processing of proprial and deproprial lexical units in the field of explanatory lexicography. Second, we provide some more general information about the ADCC and, most importantly, about the macrostructure and microstructure of the dictionary in reference to the topic of the present study. We focus on the inclusion of proprial and deproprial entries in the ADCC and the specific treatment of proper names contained in phrasemes. Special attention is paid to the microstructure of proprial and deproprial entries, as well.
A main selling point of predicativism is that, in addition to accounting for predicative uses of proper names, it can successfully account for their referential uses while treating them as ...predicates, thus providing a uniform semantics for proper names. The strategy is to postulate an unpronounced determiner that is realised with names when they appear to function as singular terms, making them effectively a concealed determiner phrase. I argue against the thesis that names are really predicates in referential uses. I discuss four different environments where names do not behave like the determiner phrases that are thought to embed them.
•Paragon and Antonomasia are analyzed in detail as independent figures.•Both figures share identical constructional devices, i.e., (proper) names.•The two figures differ in the quality and function ...of their respective conceptual frames.•Both figures are frequently occurring mechanisms as opposed to marginal rhetorical devices.
Paragon and antonomasia share identical constructional devices, namely, proper names that participate in an exchange relation with other entities, or proper names that are modified by various constructional devices, such as definite or indefinite articles, of-phrases, determining adjectives, or epithets. The present paper focuses on two main objectives. The first of these is to unveil the conceptual tools required for the expression of paragon and antonomasia, and determine whether or not these two figures are explained exclusively by means of metaphoric and/or metonymic processes, as has been suggested in previous studies. The second objective is to explore the role of constructional devices that account for instances of paragon and antonomasia. In the present study, it is claimed that proper names modified and enriched by constructional devices activate frames which allow for the emergence of intensified and even hyperbolic interpretations. The difference between the two mechanisms lies in the quality and the function of conceptual frames.
Este artículo teórico ofrece una visión general cómo existen los nombres propios y los diferentes tipos de nombres en el sistema mental, además de proporcionar nuevas soluciones basadas en la ...perspectiva cognitiva para antiguos problemas de la teoría del nombre. La onomástica cognitiva es un enfoque relativamente nuevo para el estudio de los nombres propios basado en un enfoque cognitivo del lenguaje. En este marco, los nombres, como elementos lingüísticos, forman parte del sistema cognitivo, por lo que la representación mental y el uso de nombres propios pueden describirse mediante procesos cognitivos generales. La visión general de los temas y las direcciones de la investigación en onomástica cognitiva muestra que el estudio de los nombres y el nombramiento en un marco cognitivo tienen un gran potencial. El artículo analiza dos temas controvertidos de la teoría del nombre y proporciona más evidencia de las ventajas del enfoque cognitivo. En primer lugar, se aborda el significado de los nombres propios desde una perspectiva cognitiva, señalando la compleja matriz de significados de esta clase de palabras; luego se discute la categorización de los nombres propios, es decir, cómo emergen las redes y subredes de nombres dentro del léxico mental.
We review some of the most prominent challenges in the semantics and pragmatics of fictional names and propose a pragmatic theory of fictional names whereby understanding a fictional name requires ...imagining possible contexts of interpretation of the name. Similarly to other pragmatic approaches to fiction and fictional contexts, we maintain that fictional texts require that the interpreter engages in a game of pretense of sort and are, therefore, prescriptions to imagine a state of affairs that is not the real one. In contrast to these approaches, however, we propose that interpreting a fictional text does not require imagining a set of possible state of affairs where the text would be true but, rather, requires imagining a set of possible contexts where the text would be meaningful. In order to apply this framework to fictional names, we adopt a contextual theory of proper names, which we have proposed and defended in previous work.
