[Lingtyp] [Spam:] nouns denoting months and days of the week
Mark Van de Velde
mark.vandevelde at cnrs.fr
Tue Jun 25 19:33:09 UTC 2024
Dear colleagues:
I do think that Willy Van Langendock’s (WvL) work has convincingly dealt
with many or most of the seemingly unusual or puzzling issues around
names that have come up in this discussion, partly by reminding of the
common distinction between lexemes (dictionary entries) and grammatical
categories. The question whether or not something is a proper name
depends on how it is used. /Kylian/, /Mbappé/ and /Kylian Mbappé/ are
proprial lemmas (entries in the onymicon) that are typically used as
proper names, but that can also be used as common nouns. Likewise, words
such as /word/, which WvL calls appellative lemmas, are typically used
as common nouns, but they can also be used as proper names, in autonymic
function, as in /the word word/ (close apposition), or /Not every
language has a word for word/ (no indefinite article */a word for a
word/). Then, WvL points out that the lexicon can contain
proprio-appellative lemmas, used with comparable ease and frequency as
proper names or common nouns, such as brand names.
I suppose few linguists would find it interesting to determine whether
the English lexeme /drink/ is really a noun (as in/I need a drink/) or a
verb (as in /You drink too much/). In this respect “nomino-verbal”
lemmas such as /drink/ are similar to proprio-appellative lemmas such as
/Volkswagen /(/He bought a Volkswagen/ versus /Volkswagen is a German
brand/), even though the grammatical differences between proper names
and common nouns are smaller that those between, say, nouns and verbs.
In order to talk about proprial lemmas used as common nouns, I have
sometimes used the term /deproprial nouns/ (but I now wonder whether
that was a smart move, as it may imply that derivation is necessarily
involved, versus simply the use of the same lexeme in different contexts).
English may not be the most insightful example language to discuss these
distinctions, which is one of the reasons why I attached the paper on
Kirundi. In Kirundi, proprial lemmas used as proper names versus as
common (“deproprial”) nouns are clearly grammatically distinguished.
Used as proper names, they trigger a special kind of semantic agreement:
they agree according to the gender of the noun that expresses their
presupposed categorical meaning (for me confirming the validity of WvL’s
theory on this point as well). The “same” name (i.e. based on the same
proprial lemma) will agree in gender 1 (the gender of the noun for
‘person’) or in gender 9 (the gender of the noun for ‘dog’), depending
on whether it is the name of a person or a dog.
(1) Rundi (Van de Velde 2009: 224)
a. u-ru-kara ‘black(ness)’ (class 11)
b. u-muu-ntu ‘person’ (class 1); i-m-bwá ‘dog’ (class 9)
c. Rukara a-rikó a-rafuungura
Rukara 1sm-is 1-eating
‘Rukara (a person) is eating.’
d. Rukara i-rikó i-iraryá
Rukara 9sm-is 9-eating
‘Rukara (a dog) is eating.’
Most proprial lemmas in the Bantu languages have a transparant
etymology. It is clear on which appellative lemma they are based. In
“deproprial uses” (hang on: proprial lemmas with an appellative
etymology used as common nouns) proper name agreement is not available
to them and they trigger formal agreement based on the gender of their
etymological source. Thus, in his short grammar of Kirundi, Meeussen
(1959:191) noted that in some cases Kirundi personal names trigger
syntactic agreement on adnominal modifiers and semantic (in this case
animate, not proper name) agreement on verbs, as in (2).
(2) Kagǔba ka-a-Nkúba à-ríima
Kaguba 12-gen-Nkuba 1sm-rises_to_power
Kaguba (son) of Nkuba rises to power.’
In (2), the genitive modifier is restrictive/disambiguating, and
/Kaguba/ is therefore used as a common noun with the meaning ‘person
called Kaguba.’ Its initial syllable /ka/ strongly suggests that its
etymology is a class 12 noun, marked by the prefix /ka-/ in Kirundi.
WvL is my old PhD supervisor and I am grateful for all the things he
taught me. I’ll rest my case after this.
Enjoy the rest of your week,
Mark
On 25/06/2024 19:13, Juergen Bohnemeyer via Lingtyp wrote:
>
> 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)
> Professor, Department of Linguistics
> University at Buffalo
>
> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
> Phone: (716) 645 0127
> Fax: (716) 645 3825
> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu <mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
> <http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/>
>
> Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID
> 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)
>
> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
> (Leonard Cohen)
>
> --
>
> *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?
> --
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
>
> Tel.:
>
>
>
> +49/361/2113417
>
> E-Post:
>
>
>
> christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
>
> Web:
>
>
>
> https://www.christianlehmann.eu
>
>
>
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>
>
> Mark Van de Velde
> Directeur du LLACAN (CNRS-INaLCO)
> mark.vandevelde.cnrs.fr <https://mark.vandevelde.cnrs.fr/>
> bantu.cnrs.fr <https://bantu.cnrs.fr/>
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