'God' the name

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Earl Stanley Bragado Fronda
Keyword(s):  
Definite Description ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Descriptive Names ◽  
Jack The Ripper

The word ‘God’ is typically thought to be a proper name, a name of a defined entity. From another position it appears to be a description that is fundamentally synonymous to ‘the first of all causes’, or ‘the font et origo of the structure of possibilities’, or ‘the provenience of being’, or ‘the generator of existence’. This lends credence to the view that ‘God’ is a truncated definite description. However, this article proposes that ‘God’ is a name given to whatever is that which is the first of all causes, the font et origo of the structure of possibilities, the provenience of being, the generator of existence. If so, then it is a descriptive name. Yet even among descriptive names ‘God’ is unique, for it is neither convertible to a proper name (unlike ‘Neptune’), nor to a definite description (unlike ‘Jack the Ripper’ and ‘Deep Throat’). ‘God’ is an inveterate descriptive name.

Was Aristotle Named ‘Aristotle’?

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne C. Minas
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Definite Description ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
The Individual

Yes, Aristotle was named ‘Aristotle’. I want to show that since ‘Aristotle’ is a proper name, this is true by definition. My theory of proper names is a version of Russell's, a theory that a name is equivalent in meaning to definite description(s) which single out the individual, if there is one, to which the name refers. (“When I say,e.g. ‘Homer existed’, I am meaning by ‘Homer’ some description, say ‘the author of the Homeric poems’ .”) Braithwaite at one time said that the proper name ‘Aristotle’ meant the description ‘the individual named “Aristotle” ’. This theory, which makes it contradictory to suppose that Aristotle was not (the individual) named ‘Aristotle’ I will argue is the correct one. This will involve some explanation of what naming is, which I will carry out in the first two sections. My contention is that naming is an activity that can be done either explicitly or non-explicitly. And names can be conferred either (a) on the basis of acquaintance or (b) by associating the name with descriptions.

The Problem of the Missing Article in the Use of ‘God’

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Rien Op Den Brouw
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Definite Description ◽  
Prepositional Phrase ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Third Place ◽  
The Third ◽  
Proper Nouns ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Christian Discourse

This article is concerned with the use of ‘God’ in Judaeo-Christian discourse. The debate over ‘God’ has mainly centred on the puzzling issue of whether ‘God’ is a proper name with no descriptive connotation at all or whether it is a descriptive term with unique reference. In my view four things have to be taken into account in analysing the use of this term. In the first place, the term ‘God’ is a speech or communication phenomenon. Any treatment of this term should therefore consider the intentions, purposes, beliefs that a speaker has in using this word. In the second place, in Christian theistic discourse this term occurs both with and without modification. ‘The God of Israel’ is an example of ‘God’ with modification. It can be analysed as a noun phrase in which ‘God’ fulfils the function of HEAD, ‘the’ is a definite article filling the DETERMINER slot, and ‘of Israel’ is a prepositional phrase functioning as POSTMODIFIER. The use of only the term ‘God’ is an example without modification. In the third place, when Christians use ‘God’, either with or without modification, they use it to refer to, to describe or address one particular being. In the fourth place, when they use ‘God’ without modification, they do not use this term with an (in-) definite article. In this article three accounts of the term ‘God’ will be discussed: the proper name analysis, the definite description analysis, and the title-phrase analysis. Grammatically speaking, among the defenders of any of these analyses there is an agreed consensus on the classification of ‘God’ as a noun, but there is a disagreement about whether ‘God’ belongs to the category of proper nouns or to that of common nouns. Those adopting one of the last two analyses assume that ‘God’ is a common noun. This article presents an inquiry into the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three analyses. In brief, the question we are seeking to answer is the following: what kind of term is ‘God’ and what is a Christian saying when he says ‘God’?

scholarly journals Contextual Influences on Reference

2019 ◽  
pp. 259-280
Author(s):  
Craige Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Definite Description ◽  
Contextual Influences ◽  
Rigid Designator ◽  
Domain Restriction ◽  
De Re ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
The Past ◽  
De Se ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Careful Investigation

This chapter considers a number of ways in which the understood reference of a definite noun phrase—definite description, pronoun, demonstrative, indexical, or proper name—may depend on the context in which it is uttered. Contextual influences are reflected in phenomena such as anaphora and familiarity presuppositions, descriptive incompleteness, domain restriction, dependence on a shifted perspective in intensional contexts resulting in de re, de dicto, and de se interpretations, and inclusion of context-sensitive predicates. Careful investigation of particular types of context dependence has played an important role in the evolution of semantic theories of these NP types over the past fifty years. But outstanding puzzles about how context influences reference pose challenges to the most influential current semantic theories of some NP types, including direct reference theories of indexicals and demonstratives, and rigid designator accounts of proper names.

Presuppositions as pragmemes: The case of exemplification acts

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-75
Author(s):  
Alessandro Capone
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Definite Description ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Proper Name

AbstractThis paper is an example of how contextual information interacts with the interpretation of noun phrases (NPs) in discourse. When we encounter an NP escorted by the definite article or a proper name, the expectation is triggered that the speaker is referring to some referent x that the hearer can normally identify. Strawson and Russell have agreed that a referent must be associated with a definite description so that the assertion containing it can be said to be true. In the case where a description does not refer to anything, the assertion is considered by Russell to be false, while Strawson says that the issue of truth or falsity does not arise. In this paper, we examine a case in which contextual information interacts with the interpretation of NPs in discourse and the hearer is not expected to identify a referent when hearing a proper name. In this case, the issue of truth or falsity does not arise, because the hearer does not identify the referent. In fact, s/he does not intend for the discourse to about a referent at all. These situations are primarily represented by sentences uttered during the course of a grammar lecture, in which the lecturer is explaining a rule of language and does not focus on external reality. The hearers are aware of this focus and do not process the NP (in general a proper name) to identify a specific referent. This discourse is of three types, which will be discussed at the end of this paper.

Étude Descriptive D'Énoncés Du Type De "Ça / Les Féministes Protestent"

1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-270
Author(s):  
Pierre Lerat
Keyword(s):  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Definite Description ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Semantic Properties

Pierre Lerat: descriptive study of utterances like Ça, les féministes protestent The structure considered (NP, S) is a particuliar (oral) case of dislocation (see J. Deulofeu 1977 and 1979). This article draws attention to two semantic properties of utterances such as Ça, les féministes protestent: 1) NP refers to a definite referential object (deictic, anaphoric, proper name, definite description); 2) the typical interpretation of the structure is "concerning NP".

"ROSE" is Faster Than "rose": Proper Name Advantage Using Ambiguous Words

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remo Job ◽  
Francesca Peressotti ◽  
Roberto Cubelli ◽  
Lorella Lotto
Keyword(s):  
Ambiguous Words ◽  
Proper Name

Extinction and Thalassal Regression

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-126
Author(s):  
Philippe Lynes
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
Extinction Event ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Zero Degree

This essay examines certain intersections between writing and extinction through an eco-deconstructive account of the psychoanalysis of water. Jacques Derrida has often drawn attention to the interplay between the sound ‘O,’ and ‘eau,’ in Maurice Blanchot's own proper name, as well as in his novels, récits and theoretical works; both the zero-degree of organic excitation towards which the death drive aims and the question of water. Sandor Ferenczi's notion of thalassal regression suggests that the desire to return to the tranquility of the maternal womb parallels a response to a traumatic prehistoric extinction event undergone by organic life once forced to abandon its aquatic existence. Through Gaston Bachelard's Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, however, one can double the imaginary of water along the axes of a personal death organic life defers and delays, and an impersonal extinction it cannot. Derrida's unpublished 1977 seminar on Blanchot's 1941 novel Thomas the Obscure, however, allows us to imagine an exteriority to extinction, the possibility

DIRECTIONS OF ASSOCIATIVE IDENTIFICATION OF PERSONAL NAMES

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (28) ◽  
pp. 118-128
Author(s):  
Olena Karpenko ◽  
Tetiana Stoianova
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sound Symbolism ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Communicative Process ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Scientific Value ◽  
The Brain

The article is devoted to the study of personal names from a cognitive point of view. The study is based on the cognitive concept that speech actually exists not in the speech, not in linguistic writings and dictionaries, but in consciousness, in the mental lexicon, in the language of the brain. The conditions for identifying personal names can encompass not only the context, encyclopedias, and reference books, but also the sound form of the word. In the communicative process, during a free associative experiment, which included a name and a recipient’s mental lexicon. The recipient was assigned a task to quickly give some association to the name. The aggregate of a certain number of reactions of different recipients forms the associative field of a proper name. The associative experiment creates the best conditions for identifying the lexeme. The definition of a monosemantic personal name primarily includes the search of what it denotes, while during the process of identifying a polysemantic personal name recipients tend have different reactions. Scientific value is posed by the effect of the choice of letters for the name, sound symbolism, etc. The following belong to the generalized forms of identification: usage of a hyperonym; synonyms and periphrases or simple descriptions; associations denoting the whole (name stimulus) by reference to its part (associatives); cognitive structures such as “stimulus — association” and “whole (stimulus) — part (associative)”; lack of adjacency; mysterious associations. The topicality of the study is determined by its perspective to identify the directions of associative identification of proper names, which is one of the branches of cognitive onomastics. The purpose of the study is to identify, review, and highlight the directions of associative identification of proper names; the object of the research is the names in their entirety and variety; its subject is the existence of names in the mental lexicon, which determines the need for singling out the directions for the associative identification of the personal names.

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