Quantifying the Lemma Massa as a Proper-Name in the John and Massa Tales

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-53
Author(s):  
Floyd Knight
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Method ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Common Noun ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
Mixed Method Research ◽  
Fourth Condition ◽  
Proper Name

English nouns have been described as having the ability to “switch easily between common-noun and proper-name uses.” Such changes or transformations are sometimes misanalysed by researchers and are often hard for ELL and L2 ESL researchers to detect. In this article, the author will analyze and tag the use of the Lemma MASTER (Massa/Maussa/Marsta/Marster/Master) as both a proper-name and as a common noun in the John and Massa tales from three corpora as well as provide a procedure for doing mixed method research to adjudicate differences in analysis offered by various scholars. The author will also discuss the need to add a fourth condition to Kripke's definition for proper names and why undertaking pragmatic and contextual analysis is warranted.

Neurolinguistic and syntactic evidence for basic level meaning in proper names

1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willy Van Langendonck
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Common Noun ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
The Status ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Basic Level

This paper is intended to be an interdisciplinary investigation of the status of proper names, although it takes linguistics as its point of departure. In this study I will define proper names in terms of the currently developing Radical Construction Grammar, as promoted by Croft (to appear). Starting from the referential and semantic functions of proper names, I discuss the opposing theses of the language philosophers John Searle and Saul Kripke, and then formulate my position that proper names are assigned an ad hoc referent in an ad hoc name-giving act, i.e. not on the basis of a concept or predication as with common nouns. This ad hoc assignment can be repeated several times, so numerous people can be called John. Proper names do not have asserted lexical meaning but do display presuppositional meanings of several kinds: categorical (basic level), associative senses (introduced either via the name-bearer or via the name-form) and grammatical meanings. Language specifically, this referential and semantic status is reflected in the occurrence of proper names in certain constructions. I thus claim that close (or 'restrictive') appositional patterns of the form [definite article + noun + noun], e.g. the poet Burns, are relevant to the definition of proper names in English and also to the categorical (often basic level) meaning of the name. From proper names we can also derive nouns that appear as a special kind of common noun, e.g. another John. From a methodological viewpoint it is imperative to distinguish here between (proprial) lexemes or lemmas in isolation (dictionary entries) and proprial lemmas in their different functions (prototypically: proper name, nonprototypically: common noun or other). To corroborate the above theses, I will adduce recent psycholinguistic and especially neurolinguistic evidence. The overall argument will be based mainly on material from Germanic languages, especially English, Dutch and German.

scholarly journals Les techniques de traduction des urbanonymes sur l’exemple des romans policiers polonais et leurs traductions en français

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
Urszula Kochanowska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Common Noun ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Proper Name

There is a common belief that proper names are not to be translated. The author traced the transfer of urbanonyms in French translations of two Polish crime novels set in contemporary Warsaw. The analysis has been based on the techniques of translating proper names by K. Hejwowski (2004, 2015). The dominant techniques used in various categories of urbanonyms have been distinguished (simple transfer, transfer with spelling modification, translation). In the case of street names, avenues and squares derived from surnames, translators use inflectional neutralization. Another frequent technique is to add the qualifiers rue (‘street’) and quartier (‘district’) to the names of streets and neighbourhoods. In Polish, they are often omitted, which, in the case of street names, is unacceptable in French. Moreover, several techniques allowing removing a proper name or to replace it with a common noun have also been detected. All in all, the techniques applied for translating urbanonyms make it easier for the French recipient to follow the threads of the novel and to read foreign names. However, they deprive him/her of contact with some features of foreign names’ strangeness that characterize a different cultural area.

Variable article use with acronyms and initialisms

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-78
Author(s):  
Elena Callegaro ◽  
Simon Clematide ◽  
Marianne Hundt ◽  
Sara Wick
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Common Type ◽  
Common Noun ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Full Form ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Marked Preference ◽  
Data Driven Approach

Abstract Shortening is a common type of word-formation in many languages. Crystal (2008) distinguishes two kinds of abbreviation: initialisms and acronyms. Article use in English is variable with both acronyms and initialisms used as proper names (e.g. (the) UKIP, at the UN vs. at MIT). The question is whether variability is largely dependent on the semantics of the underlying full form (i.e. whether this is derived from a proper name or common noun) or whether the two types of abbreviation show different behaviour with respect to variable article use. This paper uses data from CoStEP, a new, word-aligned version of EuroParl, and a data-driven approach to investigate variable article use with abbreviations and their full forms uttered by English native speakers and compares the findings to data from parallel German and Italian corpora. The results show higher article variability in English and a marked preference for and near categorical article use in German and Italian. Furthermore, our evidence confirms that acronyms tend towards the proper name end of the cline, while initialisms behave syntactically more like common nouns.

scholarly journals Common names and proper nouns: Morphosyntactic evidence of a complete nominal paradigm

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 815
Author(s):  
Samuel Jambrović
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Common Noun ◽  
The Other ◽  
Proper Noun ◽  
Proper Nouns ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Empirical Coverage ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
At Home

The terms "common noun" and "proper name" encode two dichotomies that are often conflated. This paper explores the possibility of the other combinations—"common name" and "proper noun"—and concludes that both exist on the basis of their morphosyntactic behavior. In support of common names, inflectional regularization is determined to result from a "name" layer in the structure, meaning that common nouns that regularize are, in fact, common names (computer mouses, tailor’s gooses). In support of proper nouns, there are bare singular count nouns in English that receive definite interpretations and seem to be licensed as arguments by the same null determiner as proper names (I left town, she works at home). Not only does a four-way distinction between nouns, names, proper nouns, and proper names achieve greater empirical coverage, but it also captures the independent morphosyntactic effects of [PROPER] and [NAME] as features on D and N, respectively.

scholarly journals Proper Names and Common Nouns are differently supported by Cognitive Reserve and Semantic Knowledge in healthy aging

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Montemurro ◽  
Maria Montefinese ◽  
Martina Serena ◽  
Veronica Pucci ◽  
Sara Mondini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Cognitive Reserve ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Semantic Knowledge ◽  
Common Noun ◽  
Additive Effects ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Relevant Component ◽  
Name Retrieval

Cognitive reserve refers to acquired learnings that modulate brain resistance to physiological aging or brain damage. One relevant component of cognitive reserve seems to be the richness of connections in the semantic knowledge. We examined the influence of cognitive reserve and semantic knowledge on proper name and common noun retrieval.Sixty-six elderly participants were administered a questionnaire for cognitive reserve, and tests assessing semantic knowledge and proper name and common noun retrieval. Results showed that proper names were more difficult to retrieve than common nouns. Moreover, cognitive reserve and semantic knowledge were linearly and positively associated with common noun retrieval, with additive effects. In contrast, they interacted with each other in predicting the retrieval of proper names: cognitive reserve had a greater impact on proper name retrieval in older adults with weaker semantic profile, while semantic knowledge assisted proper name retrieval in older adults with scarcer cognitive reserve.

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.

Chronofact Names: Their Transformations in Contemporary MassMedia

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-102
Author(s):  
Irina Kryukova
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
New Words ◽  
Technological Disasters ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Tragic Event ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
Historical Periods

The article presents the results of the study devoted to the semantic transformations of chronofact names understood as proper names referring to resonance events that are often tragic. In spite of many studies devoted to the processes of new words activation in various historical periods, proper names, with rare exceptions, are not included in the phenomena under the study. The objective of the following research is to identify universal features of chronofact names that make it possible to study these names as a separate group of onyms with their specific semantic and motivational characteristics. The proper names that have become the symbols of technological disasters, terrorist attacks, antigovernment actions, etc. (Chernobyl, Fukushima, Nord-Ost, Beslan, Bolotnaya Square, Maydan, and so on) served as the material of this study. Contextual analysis of these names in Russian media in the last decades, as well as component analysis of the connotative semantics of each name, allowed the author to select several common characteristics of chronofact names. First, every chronofact name undergoes rapid semantic transformations in the following order: it denotes a certain object – it denotes a singular tragic event (metonymy) and the development of a connotative onym – it denotes any other similar event (metaphor) and develops the characteristics of a precedent name. Second, chronofact names display same lexical and grammatical signs and they are used in homogenous contexts. Third, under certain extra-linguistic conditions, chronofact names are capable of expanding their figurative meanings and denoting a genuine notion for a long time. The material under the analysis is of interest to theoretical understanding of connotation as well as lexicographic description.

Triangulating Area Studies, Not Just Methods

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudra Sil
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Mixed Method ◽  
Mixed Method Research ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
Causal Laws ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

This chapter revisits trade-offs that qualitative researchers face when balancing the different expectations of area studies and disciplinary audiences. One putative solution to such trade-offs, mixed-method research, emphasizes the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods. CAS, as defined above, essentially encourages a different form of triangulation—the pooling of observations and interpretations across a wider array of cases spanning multiple areas. This kind of triangulation can be facilitated by cross-regional contextualized comparison, a middle-range approach that stands between area-bound qualitative research and (Millean) macro-comparative analysis that brackets out context in search of causal laws. Importantly, this approach relies upon an area specialist’s sensibilities and experience to generate awareness of local complexities and context conditions for less familiar cases. The examples of cross-regional contextualized comparison considered in this chapter collectively demonstrate that engagement with area studies scholarship and the pursuit of disciplinary knowledge can be a positive-sum game.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document