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On the Proper Treatment of Proper Names

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ThomsenH. E.1997. On the Proper Treatment of Proper Names. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 20, 91–110.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2010

Hanne Erdman Thomsen
Affiliation:
Department of Computational Linguistics, Copenhagen Business School, Dalgas Have 15, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark. Email: het/id@cbs.dk
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Extract

The present paper is a discussion of the syntactic and semantic treatment of proper names in the generalized quantifier framework, and supports the view that the semantic value of proper names is of the same kind as that of other nouns – sets of individuals, whereas unique individuals are assigned as the value of the NP-level. Furthermore, it i s argued that the set denoted by a name contains the individuals name-related to the expression in question, i.e. the individuals bearing the name. In other uses (e.g. the museum bought a Picasso) the name denotes the extension of an ad hoc predicate. Finally, the relation between th e proposed analysis and Saussure's concept of the linguistic sign is briefly discussed.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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