User:Urszag/proper

Proper nouns (in Latin and other languages).

• In English, use of "the", "a", and no article. Use of definite/indefinite articles in other languages.
• In Niuean, proper nouns take a different absolutive article "a". The names of months are used with this, apparently. According to this writing guide, capitalization in used in Niuean for personal names, place names, days of the week, months. However, days of the week have names of the form "day + identifier" and they do not take definite case particles: e.g. the common noun ako "day" forms he ako "during the day" and the putative proper noun Ako Tapu "Sunday" forms he Ako Tapu "on Sunday(s)".

Quotations from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

• "Ruth Barcan Marcus (1961) proposed that we ought to conceive of proper names as ‘tags’. To say that proper names are tags is, for Marcus, to say that they have no linguistic meaning beyond their reference. Proper names do not, on this sort of view, refer by way of the descriptions they allegedly stand for." "According to Kripke, there is no need to posit that definite descriptions ever refer. Instead, we can explain away their apparent referential properties by noting that, even if they do not refer, speakers will typically still have targets in mind for them to latch onto. So long as we are reasonably good at recovering those targets, we will then be in a position to direct each other’s thought to particular objects and individuals by means of utterances of definite descriptions without needing to posit that token instances of these expressions themselves ever function to lock onto those objects or individuals." (Reference)
• Names: mentions Samoan proper name article.
  • Samoan capitalization. Samoan proper nouns. The philosophy article appears to be false: this article says *a can be reconstructed as a Proto-Polynesian proper noun nominative marker but does not survive independently in Samoan. It is found in Māori and in Niuean, the latter described "in Seiter (1980:27-60)", this being Studies in Niuean syntax.

• • "As well as having a range of entities to which it applies, the common noun “bachelor” has a meaning; it means man who has never been married. Is the same true of names? “Socrates” certainly applies to things. It applies, most obviously, to the founder of Western philosophy. When understood as a generic name (see Section 1), “Socrates” applies to several individuals: to a first approximation, all those who are called “Socrates.” But does “Socrates” also possess a meaning? Do they have a meaning that determines, or restricts, their extension (i.e., their range of application or reference)?"
  • "Of course, the majority of specific names do not appear in any dictionary. Moreover, it should not be thought that dictionary “definitions” always give the meaning of the word they appear under (one entry for “Socrates” on Wiktionary just says “A male given name of mostly historical use”)."
  • "Strawson himself, who developed the account of identification on display, and who thought that a name’s reference was determined by its associated identifying description (1959: 181–182), did not conceive of that description as expressing the name’s meaning (1950: 340)."
  • "However, many philosophers have found the view that names do not have a meaning intuitively compelling (Mill 1843: 34, 36–37; Strawson 1950; Ziff 1960: 85–89, 93–94; Marcus 1961). They still believe names refer, and so require an alternative metasemantics—an account, in this case, of what determines reference—to the meaning-mediated one. The now standard alternative to the meaning-mediated model is one on which reference (or range) is directly established by use. The referent is the referent (or the range the range) because it satisfies a particular condition, but that condition amounts to consistency with past use, rather than encapsulating the meaning of the expression."

• • In Hawaiian, proper nouns take the determiner ʻo rather than ka/ke/he as a subject, and take iā rather than i as an object marker.

Some terms can be used either as common nouns or proper nouns. An example is "sun": this can be defined, or "the Sun" can be used as a label pointing to the specific star that our planet orbits.

Semantic criteria:

• Proper nouns do not denote qualities. They instead function as pointers to unique entities. The pointer does not necessarily have to be unambiguous. Although the name "Mark" refers to multiple people, it is a proper noun because there is no common quality necessarily shared between all "Mark"s other than the fact of their having that name. (Some personal names tend to be associated with particular genders, but "Mark" does not actually denote "a person who is male".) It is possible to describe a specific referent of the proper noun, but this description does not apply at all to other things bearing that name; therefore, it is not possible to "define" the meaning of a proper noun beyond pointing to its referent.
  • In contrast, a common noun such as "dog" is regularly used to describe qualities of non-unique entities, and it is possible to gesture at defining qualities of "dogs" in general, or of "a dog (unspecific)" (even if no complete, exact definition can be provided).
• One tricky point is words that refer to a quality defined by relation to a proper noun. Some of these are non-unique (such as "Christian", "Englishman", "Marxist") but others are more or less unique ("Christianity", "English" (the language), "Marxism"). Further complicating things, terms like this are sometimes used with "non-empty" definitions (e.g. we might in some contexts restrictively define "Christianity" and "Marxism" as the doctrines actually taught by Jesus and Marx) and are at other times used as mere labels (e.g. we might in some contexts use "Christianity" to refer to things that are commonly called "Christianity", and "Marxism" to refer to things that are commonly called "Marxism", regardless of how distant these things may be from their putative origins with their namesakes).
  • An example is patronymics. A word meaning "offspring/son of X" is not a pure proper noun, since it has a definition beyond just its use as a label/pointer to a unique entity. Would a patronymic qualify as a proper noun assuming it referred to a single unique entity? I feel like the simple answer is "yes". In that case, why would patronymics that can apply to multiple people be different? Family names also can apply to multiple people.
  • The names of ethnicities and the names of the lands that they live in. Morphologically, sometimes the land is the base form and the ethnic term is derived: e.g. English Iraq, Iraqi; Ukraine, Ukrainian. But often the ethnonym is the morphological base from which the land name is derived: e.g. "Finn", "Finland". In theory, "Finland" could be defined as "the land where the Finns live", with semantic content beyond its pointer to a particular location or political entity. In practice, though, names such as "Finland" are not necessarily required to meet such a definition: if we envision a scenario where all humans somehow disappear from the face of the earth, we can still imagine using "Finland" as a label for a location on this depopulated Earth. When we consider "Finland" as a political entity, we can imagine Finland gaining or losing territory, which implies that it is not a semantically empty label, but has a meaningful definition along the lines of "the territory under the control of the sovereign state of Finland". In this case, "Finland" refers both to the state and to the territory: would it be a proper noun in the first sense, but not in the second? Or is it being unique sufficient to qualify it for a proper noun even when it has a non-empty definition? And furthermore, if "Finland" is a proper noun, what (if anything) stops the names of religions that are commonly conceptualized as unitary/unique entities, such as "Islam", "Christianity", etc., from being proper nouns?
    • Continuing along this line of questioning, do personal names such as "Mark" or city names such as "Rome" have some kind of meaning/definition beyond bare reference? A city is not a fixed and arbitrary location: cities may organically expand or shift their boundaries as people build and demolish residences, or the boundaries of a city may be altered by political means. Is this part of the meaning of "Rome", or is "Rome" still just a label that is being used to point at this concept (which is more complicated than just a particular arbitrary region)? If the latter, what is the difference between a label pointing to an abstract concept, and a term defining an abstract concept?
      • Well, this abstract meaning is not a unique feature of the name "Rome": it applies equally to the names of all cities. That is, "Rome" means no more than "the city that is called Rome"; "Mark" means no more than "the person that is called Mark"; "Finland" means no more than "the country that is called Finland". In contrast, it seems conceivable to define "old age" more specifically than just "the state/stage of being called 'old age'". It is possible to use religion names such as "Islam" or "Christianity" as proper nouns, isn't it? Meaning no more than "the religion called 'Islam'" and "the religion called 'Christianity'". We can imagine giving more substantial definitions, but we can't be sure that definitions exist that would encompass everything that is actually called by the name; e.g. Christian atheism. We also can't give a clear general definition of the scope of a religion name in terms of historical chains of influence, because religions sometimes split from a previous named religion; e.g. Judaism is usually understood as not encompassing Christianity or Islam, even though the latter two depend on the first for their existence. So I think there is a good case to be made that religion names are often used as labels that do not have a simple qualitative definition in and of themselves. And religion names are often treated as referring to a unique entity.--That said, even if we can and often do use religion names as mere labels, they are also used with non-empty definitions: e.g. it is possible to use Christianity to mean "the religion following the precepts taught by Jesus", and to accordingly say based on this definition that some people who think they are practicing Christianity are mistaken in fact. In this case, "Christianity" is no more a proper noun than "democracy".
      • It doesn't really come up in Latin because Latin tends not to use nouns to refer to languages, but what about language names? They don't necessarily have content beyond "the language called X": "English" was historically spoken in England by English people, but the language might continue to be called that even in other circumstances. The name "Sanskrit" is used as a label for a language. In general, language names seem to be just about as much bare labels as country names are. In other cases, however, a language name can have a non-empty definition. A clear case is proto-languages: the term "Proto-Indo-European" refers to a specifically defined concept, and is not just an arbitrary label pointing at an existing thing. A term for a hypothetical language that we have no direct knowledge of might be defined in terms of its speakers: e.g. "Martian" doesn't point to any existing entity, but means "the language of Martians".

        • The same type of non-transparent meaning can be observed sometimes with phrases like "Latin alphabet", "Arabic alphabet", "Cyrillic script", which on the surface level consist of an adjective + common noun, but which are sometimes used with specific meanings that aren't fully captured just by the meanings of their components.

      • If we say then that some words, such as religion names, can be used either as proper nouns or as common nouns, what is the rule that determines how they are listed? Is the rule that words that can be used as both will be listed as common nouns? That can't be entirely true because all proper nouns can have marginal, off-the-cuff uses as common nouns (e.g. "we need another Mark"). Maybe we can do no better than just maintaining arbitrary lists of categories: countries = proper nouns, religions = common nouns. Some terms are only occasionally used as proper nouns, and probably shouldn't get a separate listing; e.g. "City Hall". So we could say that the "Proper noun" header on Wiktionary is meant for terms that are primarily used as mere pointers to unique entities.

Possible tests, other than capitalization:

• • • Are both the singular and plural in common use?
      • If "yes", it is a common noun. If "no", it is not necessarily a proper noun. Many types of abstract nouns tend to be singular-only: e.g. senectūs (“old age”) is almost always singular, but is a common noun.
    • If only the singular is in common use, can it be used indefinitely?
      • When translated into English, can it be preceded by the indefinite article "a"/"an"? If "yes", it is a common noun. If "no", it is not necessarily a proper noun. Many types of abstract nouns tend not to be used indefinitely, or are uncountable (e.g. "charity",
      • When translated into English, can it be preceded by the quantitative indefinite determiner "some"? If "yes", it is a common noun. E.g. we can certainly say "some water". We cannot normally say "some Cicero" (except with the non-quantitiative sense "some person named Cicero"). We would not normally say "some Asia", "some Rome", or "some Tiber" (e.g. *"Because of the flood, some Tiber got on the street.") It is not very strained to say "Some monarchism" or "some Christianity". Maybe another test would be that if "some more" or "less" can be used (as in "some more Christianity", "less monarchism"), the word is a common noun. Proper nouns do not have quantitative gradations, outside of exceptional treatment.
    • If only the plural is in common use, can it be used indefinitely?
      • It seems like plurale tantum mountain ranges are commonly categorized on Wiktionary as proper nouns. Some other plurale tantum place names clearly seem to be proper nouns, such as city names or island chain names. Bahamas, Maldives, Canary Islands. These don't seem to be usable indefinitely: *"Some Canary Islands", *"Some Andes", *"Some Maldives". In Latin, many ethnonyms are usually used in the plural, or exclusively so. Compare "the French", "the English" in English. Are they attested used as indefinite nouns? One complication is that in predicative use, Latin terms could be adjectives rather than nouns. Use with a number (e.g. "twenty Americans"; unlike ?*"twenty French") might be a useful diagnostic. In contrast, partitive use (as in "Quarum omnium rerum summa erat capitum Helvetiorum milia cclxiii, Tulingorum milia xxxvi, Latobrigorum xiiii, Rauracorum xxiii, Boiorum xxxii") doesn't seem to clearly show non-proper use, since the genitive plural ethnonyms here could still be definite. Another type of non-proper use I guess would be interrogative, "Which Americans"/"Which Romans", etc.
        • Other examples from Caesar: "Nam quae Cenabi oriente sole gesta essent, ante primam confectam vigiliam in finibus Arvernorum audita sunt,"
        • From Cicero: "ad multos Syracusanos"?
        • Examples from la:Tribes: Abrincatui: only used in CL in Pliny, "Lugdunensis Gallia habet Lexovios, Veliocasses, Caletos, Venetos, Abrincatuos, Ossismos..."

Proper noun examples to determine:

• • Names of pets?
  • Names of stars and planets?? (Pleiades)
  • Names of philosophies, ideologies and movements:
    • political: communismus, Non-Latin: monarchism, republicanism, capitalism,
      • Government systems: monarchy, tyranny, democracy, etc.
    • artistic/cultural: Non-Latin: dadaism
    • religious: Non-Latin: atheism, theism, deism, paganism,
      • Names of religions themselves: Islam, Shinto, Wicca, various -isms, Christianity ( Christianitas?)
    • Not usually used in the plural, or indefinitely: "Christianities" or "a Christianity" are only used in special contexts, and "a communism" or "communisms" are very unusual.
      • There are some that seem to be generally lowercased: monophysitism, etc. It's possible that the capitalization of words such as Nestorianism is because of the proper noun eponym. But Gnosticism and Docetism (when capitalized) are not derived from proper nouns. Or English "Islam".
    • Other language comparisons: Christianity (English), Cristianità (Italian), christianisme (French).
  • Names of recurring events, dates or time periods:
    • Names of feasts and holidays: (Saturnalia, but pascha, trīcennālia, equiria?) Other languages' usage is mixed on Wiktionary: 聖霊降臨. In general, these seem not to be entirely semantically empty. Some commemorate the anniversary of a past unique event. Some are arbitrarily defined by some group for some purpose; in this case, the holiday does not exist as its own independent entity outside of the practices of that group, but could be said to have a definition along the lines of "the day that people celebrate , defined by as falling on day so-and-so of such-and-such month". That said, you could argue that countries/nations also do not exist independently of human social activities. However, countries/nations are generally unique.
    • Names of months (adjectives and nouns/proper nouns?). These are partly but not entirely semantically empty. Months of a solar calendar are measured relative to the arbitrary start of the year, and correspond to particular positions of the earth in its yearly orbit (even if these positions are not associated with the same seasonal phenomena across the globe).
    • Calendar days (Ides, Nones...)
  • Some tribe names have been entered in the plural as proper nouns: e.g., Gallī, Belgae. Also singular: Alemannus, Accarōnīta
  • Misc other from current category: Aius Loquens, API, Argonauta,
    • Patronymics: Aloida, Alpharidēs, Aeacidēs
    • seas: Caspium mare, Aegaeum mare,
    • regions or districts: Caucalandensis, Cebrēnia, Corduēna
    • Political subdivisions: Aquae Calidae,
    • Mountain ranges:
      • Plural: Alpis, Andēs, Asmiraeī, Cambūniī, Cissiī, Damassī, Eblythaeī, etc. In English: Alps, Appalachians, Rockies, Andes
      • Singular: Caucasus
      • Mountains: Caelius mons
    • Laws: Lex Viaria
    • Epithets/appellations: Agnus Dei, Almus Spiritus
    • Demonym-type adjectives: Aquīnās