[Lingtyp] [Spam:] nouns denoting months and days of the week

Tue Jun 25 17:13:07 UTC 2024

Dear all – This is a great discussion! I’ve long been fascinated by the phenomena of common-proper fluidity.

The philosophers tell us that common nouns lexicalize conceptual categories, whereas proper nouns become attached to individuals via acts of naming.

But names can be metonymically extended to categories. A well-worn example of this are brand names (a Kleenex, a Jaguar).

And acts of naming can be based on rules (productive naming conventions), which can be used to generate categories.

The rule than names days of the week in a certain order from an origin point projected back in time is a productive naming convention. In (1), Wednesday is treated as a proper noun (arguably, a metaphorical toponym); in (2), it is treated as a common noun.

(1)          We’ll meet on Wednesday

(2)          I don’t like Wednesdays

(3)          We always meet on Wednesdays

(4)          We always meet on Wednesday

There are two ways to interpret (3): as a combination of the common noun with habitual/generic reference, or an indefinite interpretation which could involve either the common noun or the proper noun (a case of morphosyntactic indeterminacy, where a single surface string is compatible with two distinct parses with identical interpretations). More on the possibility of coercing indefinite common noun interpretations out of proper nouns shortly!

(4), Frans’ example, is extensionally (i.e., referentially) synonymous with (3), but the interpretation process is different. Unlike (3), (4) involves the proper noun, but the naming rule is used to coerce a generic interpretation. Somewhat similar are (5) and (6), except that in these cases, the coerced indefinite interpretation is facilitated by analogy rather than by a generative rule. As a result, the relevant categories are prototype categories (‘a soccer forward/winger with the prowess of Kylian Mbappé’, ‘a bigoted blue-collar dad like (fictional) Archie Bunker’).

(5)          Every team would like an Mbappé

(6)          In every family, there’s an Archie Bunker

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Frans Plank via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Tuesday, June 25, 2024 at 08:33
To: Greville Corbett <g.corbett at surrey.ac.uk>
Cc: Richard Coates <richard.coates at uwe.ac.uk>, Mark Van de Velde via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] [Spam:] nouns denoting months and days of the week
So, what’s the difference to "We always meet on Tuesday, although Friday would be best for me”?

I think Richard Coates has long been among those (sensibly) emphasising that it’s a difference whether we’re dealing with (a) different modes of referring, reference-by-describing and reference-by-naming, or (b) expressions of a particular lexical and morphosyntactic class dedicated to performing one or the other function.  Thus, some languages can use expressions appropriately categorised as interjections or clauses or random (phonotactically well-formed) phoneme combinations to refer-by-naming.  Would we want to see such expressions, when used for this purpose, categorised as a subcategory of nouns, nomina propria?

Frans

On 25. Jun 2024, at 14:03, Greville Corbett via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

Dear Christian

Here are some helpful thoughts I pass on from Richard Coates, who’s not on Lingtyp; he writes very interestingly on names (place names, family names …).

I don't think day-names are proper. A major criterion for me is behaviour with indefinite markers. If I use a proper name with an indefinite article in English, it can only mean 'a member of the set of items bearing that name'. So you are a Greville and there is a London in Canada. (Skipping over complications like metaphorical usage - he's just a Putin, we'll build a new Jerusalem).

Day-names are different. We always used to meet on a Tuesday. They can be used in the plural - Fridays are best for me. And the meaning is in each case constant: the day between x-1 and x+1, or the xth day of the week. I think John Lyons placed them, like months, in the sense-category cyclic.

So fundamentally I agree with Christian.

Richard

Richard Coates
Bristol Centre for Linguistics
University of the West of England
Bristol BS16 1QY, UK.
Projects:
Survey of English Place-Names (BA/AHRC) http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~aezins//survey/
Family Names of the United Kingdom (AHRC)
e: richard.coates at uwe.ac.uk<mailto:richard.coates at uwe.ac.uk>
w: http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/cahe/pdf.aspx?page=1101
Very best
Grev

On 25 Jun 2024, at 11:35, Mark Van de Velde via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

Dear Christian:

Names of months are discussed clearly and extensively in Willy Van Langendonck's Theory and Typology of Proper Names (2007, Mouton de Gruyter). Van Langendonck crucially distinguishes between proper names and proprial lemmas (= lexical items typically used as proper names). He defines proper names as follows (2007:88):

<PHIvYy76LbWGrbw0.png>

The semantic and pragmatic parts of his definition are universal, but the formal part is more language-specific. Therefore a further distinction between the universal category of proper names and language-specific word classes of Proper Names is useful.

The criterion of ability to appear in close appositional constructions works well for Indo-European languages. It is naturally applied to names of months (the month of June), but not to morning or midnight (??the time of the day morning).

Van Langendonck (2007: 225-232) provides a detailed discussion of different kinds of temporal names, which also discusses the names of the days of the week. From a semantic-pragmatic point of view, they are proper names, as they denote unique entities in the basic level category day. When used as proper names, they do not take an article, as is typical for Proper Names in English. In contrast, they can't be used is close appositional constructions like ?the day Monday. This may have a simple formal explanation in the presence of the noun for the basic level category term day in the day names themselves, but it could also suggest that names of days are less typical proper names than names of months, and that therefore they have fewer of the formal characteristics of English Proper Names.

I attach a short paper on names in the Bantu language Kirundi where Van Langendonck's approach is applied, with the additional distinction between the universal category of proper names and the language specific notion of Proper Names. Names of months are discussed too. (Van de Velde, Mark (2009). Agreement as a grammatical criterion for proper name status in Kirundi. In: Onoma 44: 219-241. (written in 2011, appeared in January 2012)).

All the best,

Mark

On 25/06/2024 09:13, Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp wrote:
If one searches the web with the question "Are nouns denoting days of the week proper names?", some pages know that the answer is 'yes'. However, their argument is circular: Since English orthography requires the capitalization of such nouns, they are categorized as proper names; and since they are proper names, they are to be capitalized.

I use the following definitions: A common noun is a noun which designates an entity by subsuming it under a notion. A proper noun or name is a noun that refers to an entity without subsuming it under a notion. Consequently, a common noun can be defined; a proper noun cannot (over and beyond the onomastic category that it belongs to, like anthroponym or toponym).

Now an entity like Tuesday can easily be defined as the second day of the week; and likewise an entity like February. By this criterion, such entities appear to be notions, and the nouns designating them consequently common nouns.

If such nouns are proper nouns, then why are nouns like midnight and morning not?

What do the semanticists say? And are there structural/distributional properties distinguishing proper and common nouns which decide the alternative for designations of months and days? Are there nouns taking an intermediate position between common and proper?
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