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Prop~r Names as the

Prototypical Nominal Category


Willy Van Langendonck
University of Leuven

Proper names are the prototypical, unmarked nouns; they refer rather
than describe or predicate as do common nouns. Proper names systemati-
cally appear in close appositional structures of such types as the poet
Burns, Hurricane Edna, Fido the dog, the City of London, where they
constitute the identifying unit, while common nouns in such appositional
structures characterize the name. Proper names are definite, mostly
countable, singular and nonrecursive (nongeneric) and concrete; since these
are the unmarked features of nouns, proper names regularly display zero
or no affixes, except for marked proprial subcategories. This view· of
proper names apparently contradicts the co"gnitivist ideas of Ronald
Langacker; however, Langacker's analysis can be interpreted in such a way
that proper names constitute the prototypical nominal class.

Introduction
I argue that the nominal subclass of proper names represents the
prototypical (or, if one prefers, the unmarked) subclass of nouns. In
particular I argue that proper names are unmarked or prototypical vis-a-
vis common nouns. This conclusion runs counter to Ronald Langacker's
cognitivist view, which claims that the common noun phrase is the
prototypical nominal.

Proper Names as the Prototypical Nominal Category


I agree with Ronald Langacker's proprosal (1991; 2004) that the
general function of a noun is to refer to a "thing" in the widest sense,
usually a person or an object, Le., a concrete thing. In contrast, verbs are
used to predicate, not to refer. Most linguists and onomasts, including

Names 55.4 (December 2007): 437-444


ISSN: 0027-7738
© 2007 by The American Name Society
437
438 Names 55.4 (December 2007)

myself, assume that proper names are used primarily to refer to a thing,
and not to describe it, Le., not to predicate something about it. If it is the
essence of a nouns to refer to a thing, this seems to entail that the proper
name constitutes the prototypical noun. By contrast, common nouns are
then less prototypical nouns since they contain a predication, which is
rather typical of verbs. For example, a table is an x which is a table.
Proper names contain no such definitional lexical meaning, no descrip-
tion in the way that common nouns do; this has been argued time and
again by philosophers as well as linguists. It is impossible, indeed, to
ask, for instance, What do you understand by London? (cf. Ullmann
1962; 1969, 33), whereas it is quite possible to ask What do you under-
stand by (a) city?
Elsewhere (Van Langendonck 1999; 2007), I have posited the thesis
that proper names have no asserted (definitional) meaning, but they do
have certain presuppositional meanings. An important feature of proper
names is that they carry a categorical presupposition, and more specifi-
cally, a basic level meaning. Basic level meanings constitute the most
accessible meaning category, for instance dog in the hierarchical
threesome animal > dog > beagle. From a perceptual and conceptual
point of view, basic level senses are the easiest to process. That all
proper names carry a categorical presupposition or a basic level meaning
has been pointed out by philosophers such as Ziff (1960; 1977) and
Searle (1958; 1969), and psychologists (see La Palme Reyes et ale 1993
and Bayer 1991, who uses a different term). When you say John, it
normally concerns a male being, while Mary is rather about a woman. In
certain names, the basic level meaning figures in the name-form itself.
In European languages, this is only the case in such inanimate names as
Fleet Street, the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, Lake Ontario, Mount
Palomar, etc. Sometimes, suffixes indicate the basic level meaning, for
instance the -y in German-y or the -a in Chin-a. (As a rule, in European
languages, personal names lack an overt indication of their basic level
meaning male or female.) Since presuppositions make utterances easier
to process, we can argue that proper names are simpler or less marked
than common nouns, which can display both presuppositional and
asserted senses.
Proper Names and Nominal Categories 439

I conclude that the essence of a proper name is that it refers to a


"thing" in an ad hoc way on the basis of a basic level categorical
presupposition. This meaning is never asserted (definitional) and hence,
does not determine the referent. Moreover, a basic level meaning would
in itself be insufficient to pick out the referent. For instance, you cannot'
infer from John's appearance that he is called John. By contrast, in the
case of common nouns (appellatives), the reference is determined by the
asserted (definitional) meaning of the noun. For instance, it is on account
of a semantic description that I refer to something as a table or a river,
etc. A possible objection to this view on proper names is that name-
forms like John and Mary may refer to several people and also to
animals, even if we agree that names refer on an ad hoc basis. To
account for this multidenotativeness I have adduced the notion of
"propriallemma," a dictionary entry primarily used as a proper name. In
the dictionary you may find entries such as "John: first name primarily
given to male humans." This is an instance of a proprial lemma. So we
can have John Smith, John Brown, John Major, etc., in which John each
time is a different proper name but the same proprial lemma. The
concept of proprial lemma is also useful to account for uses of a name-
form in constructions in which it does not function as a proper name. For
example, in the expressionanother John, which means "another person
with the proprial lemma John."
I adduce an important piece of syntactic evidence for my semantic
claims on proper names (for further formal evidence, see Van Langen-
donck 2007, chapter 2). Related to the above described semantic status
of proper names is the fact that they are able to systematically appear (at
least in English) in close appositional structures of the types [def art +
common noun + (of) proper name]: the poet Burns, the river Thames, the
City of London; [common noun + proper name]: President Bush,
Hurricane Edna; [proper name + def art + common noun]: Fido the dog;
[proper name + proper name]: Robert Frost. The common noun in these
appositional structures characterizes the name, usually indicating its basic
level meaning. The proper names constitute the identifying unit. In the
case of the pattern [first name + family name], e.g., Robert Frost, both
units are of a proprial nature.
440 Names 55.4 (December 2007)

When we run through the nominal grammatical features, one fact in


particular is striking: proper names appear to display exclusively or at
least to a much greater extent the unmarked characteristics of these
grammatical features. Proper names are inherently definite, mostly
countable, singular and nonrecursive (i.e., nongeneric, nonhabitual) and
concrete, and as a rule, are third person. Marginal are such marked
categories as collective plurals (the Pyrenees), collective mass proper
names (Latin), and recursive instances (August).
Since proper names appear to be definite by nature, one might expect
them to systematically take the definite article in article languages.
Paradoxically, the most prototypical proprial subclasses, personal names'
and city names, usually take a zero article (in fact no article) in Dutch,
German, English, French, Spanish, etc.; compare English names of the
type John, Mary, London, Paris. Whenever the article appears, it
concerns less prototypical, mostly inanimate names like names of rivers
(the Rhine), mountains (the Pyrenees), deserts (the Sahara), etc.
Also, proper names may contain a number of connotations or associa ..
tions. What is usually considered the meaning of names mostly concerns
connotations or associations. These may be of two kinds: connotations
that come in via the referent, for example, the name Napoleon may
remind us of Austerlitz or Waterloo, because the referent, the name ..
bearer, won or lost the battle that took place there. On the other hand,
the association can be adduced by the name-form if it is homophonous
with a different word, for example, the Dutch name-form Koopman may
remind us of a merchant. It should be clear that these two kinds of
associative meanings are not essential and do not determine the referent,
although they may help in finding the referent through a causal or
historical chain of references, as has been argued by the philosophers
Saul Kripke and Hillary Putnam. These connotations can be fully
exploited for psycho- or socio-onomastic reasons, but we will not go into
this matter here.

Langacker's View of Proper Names


My view of the unmarkedness and prototypicality of proper names is
incompatible with that of Ronald Langacker, who considers the common
noun to be the prototypical noun because
Proper Names and Nominal Categories 441

every nominal profiles a thing construed as an instance of some type and


further incorporates some specification of quantity and grounding [Le.,
deixis]. Type, quantity, and grounding are often represented by separate
words or phrases, and a language tends to develop specific, iconically
motivated patterns of composition and constituency for expressions of this
sort. Invariably, however, there are nominals that depart from these
prototypical patterns while conforming to the schematic definition. It may
be that multiple semantic functions are subsumed by a single word; for
example, a proper noun like Iraq makes inherent specifications of type
(nation), quantity (singular), and grounding (definiteness) and therefore
stands alone as a full nominal. (1991, 54-55)

It is plausible to argue that the maximum content of a nominal


includes the categories type, instantiation, quantity, and grounding, and
that if each category is expressed by one form we have an iconic (in fact
merely an isomorphic, one-to-one) relation between form and meaning.
In this way, proper names appear as nonprototypical nominals, as
Langacker contends: "[T]hough proper names are sometimes taken as
paradigmatic for the class of nominal expressions, they are actually quite
atypi~al" (1991, 53). In my view, however, an analysis of what the
categories type, instantiation, quantity, and grounding represent in proper
names reveals that names display the least marked, in other words the
simplest instances of these categories. Let us look at each of them in
greater detail.
As to proper names and type specificatlon, Langacker (1991, 59,148)
expresses the view that proper names incorporate a type specification,
e.g., the individual designated by Stan Smith is a male human. This is
more or less equivalent to the thesis that proper names have a presup-
positional categorical meaning. Recall that this meaning must be narrowed
down to "basic level meaning" (see above; also Van Langendonck 2007,
chapter 1, 3.3.2).
Regarding proper names and instantiation, Langacker (1991: 59)
states: "Since the name [Stan Smith] is taken as characteristic of a specific
person, it further presupposes instantiation." A proper name "is a type
with only one instance" (1991,63), from which Langacker concludes that
a proper name is "degenerate." However, if "every nominal profiles a
single instance of some type" (1991, 81), then we could say that proper
names, which are even said to refer uniquely, constitute the simplest
example of a nominal, even if the name is a plurale tantum, like the
442 Names 55.4 (December 2007)

Pyrenees. Here, the plural inflection merely "highlights the internal


complexity of a unitary entity." (1991, 77).
A proper name "makes an implicit specification of quantity"
(Langacker 1991, 59), Le., the size of the profiled instance is presup-
posed to be always just one, even in the case of pluralia tantum such as
the Pyrenees, as mentioned above.
In the case of a proper name, "grounding is subsumed as well, for the
nominal is definite and portrays the profiled individual as being uniquely
apparent to the speaker and hearer on the basis of this name alone" [Le.,
Stan Smith] (Langacker 1991, 59).
Langacker goes on to argue that hence, in the case of proper names,
"type, instantiation, quantity, and grounding are conflated in a single
expression whose component parts fail to correlate with these semantic
functions" (1991,59, see also p. 148).
However, we can look at proper names and Langacker's four nominal
categories from a different angle. Since, concerning form and meaning,
the proper name constitutes an unmarked category with regard to the
common noun, it is the prototypical noun. Langacker himself recognizes
that with proper names, instantiation and quantity are presupposed or
implicit. Definiteness is usually analyzed as a presupposition of existence
and uniqueness in the universe of discourse, and finally, the type
specification is a basic level meaning. Psycholinguistically, presupposi-
tion (Osgood 1971) and basic level meaning (Rosch 1977) are considered
simple, semantically unmarked concepts. If proper names unite all these
very "simple" concepts, it can be expected that their forms as nominals
will be simple as well. This situation of (truly) diagrammatic iconic
motivation is exactly what we find: just a noun, usually without the
(definite) article. Furthermore, Langacker (1991,58) states: "Nominals
such as this spoon, in which the type specification and the notion of
instantiation are respectively indicated by the head noun and the
accompanying grounding predication, can probably be regarded as
prototypical," although instantiation and quantity are not expressed here.
It is then interesting to see that the psycholinguists La Palme Reyes,
MacNamara, Reyes, and Zolfaghari (1993, 445) use the following
formula for the definition of a name like Freddie: (Freddie: dog) = (this:
dog), which is to be read as: "Freddie in the kind DOG" is "this in the
kind DOG." In other words, a proper name consists of an expression
Proper Names and Nominal Categories 443

uniting deixis and basic level meaning· in one word. In this view, proper
names are not far from Langacker's prototypical nominal this spoon
(further see Van Langendonck 2007, chapter 2,3.1.6).
Langacker (1991, 18) proposes that a noun profiles a "thing" in the
most general sense. However, although a thing can be "anything,"
prototypically a thing is a concrete, physical object. Now it appears that
proper. names typically denote concrete things, so they may be termed
typical nouns (or nominals). Moreover, Langacker comes close to my
feeling that proper names exhibit the unmarked nominal feature of
definiteness and that they are prototypically singular, countable, non-
generic, and concrete. After having stated that "a natural path is . . .
defined by the hierarchy definite > specific indefinite > non-specific
indefinite," he goes on to say

a proper name (such as George Lakoff) represents a higher degree of


definiteness than a nominal based on a common noun (e.g., the cunning
linguist); because the relevant category has only a single member, the
conception of tj [a particular instance] is more narrowly focused than in
cases where it has to be located within a reference mass comprising an
open-ended set of instances. (1991: 308)

We can conclude that even in Langacker's own framework, proper


names are far from being deviant or degenerate nominals. On the
contrary, they can be described as prototypical. This analysis can be
confirmed by neurolinguistic evidence, for which I refer the reader to
Van Langendonck (1999; 2007). See also, and especially, Bayer (1991)
and Semenza and Zettin (1988).
Conclusion
By way of conclusion, I have established that proper names form the
prototypical class of nouns, which entails that at least the prototypical
subclasses of names normally display unmarked forms, often zero-forms.
Also, it appears that Langacker's (1991) analysis of nominals is not
compatible with a proper analysis of proper names. Finally, the iconicity
of motivation appears to override the iconicity of isomorphism.

References
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in het mentale lexicon: neurolinguistische evidentie" ["Representation
of Common Nouns and Proper Names in the Mental Lexicon:
Neurolinguistic Evidence"]. Tabu 21 :53-66.
444 Names 55.4 (December 2007)

Kripke, Saul. 1972. "Naming and Necessity." In Davidson, Donald, and


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Semenza, Carlo, and Marina Zettin. 1988. "Generating Proper Names: a
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