Proper Names with Determiners and Modifiers in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

2024-2026

 

Research Project Members

• Ana Aguilar Guevara (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
• Timo Buchholz (Universität zu Köln)
• Rafael Herrera Jiménez (El Colegio de México)
• Klaus von Heusinger (Universität zu Köln) 
• Carolina Oggiani (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
• Julia Pozas Loyo (El Colegio de México) 

Abstract

Proper names have been widely studied from a philosophical and a linguistic perspective (e.g. Frege, 1982; Russell, 1905; Searle, 1958; Strawson, 1950; Donnellan, 1970; Kripke, 1980; Soames, 2002; Elbourne, 2002; Fara, 2015; Matushansky, 2008, 2014, among others). Over the last decades, they have become an important subject of investigation with respect to the semantics of reference and the syntax of the nominal phrase and, more specifically, to the different types of determiners and modifiers they can combine with, such as indefinite and definite articles (von Heusinger & Wespel, 2007; Gomeshi & Massam, 2009; Camacho, 2019; Bernstein et al., 2019; Saab, 2021; Oggiani & Aguilar-Guevara, 2023), honorific particles (e.g. Saab, 2021), and adjectives (Sigurdsson, 2006; Bernstein et al., 2019). There is also a growing interest in the cross-linguistic perspective (e.g. Caro Reina, 2020; Becker, 2021).

In this context, the research project “Determiners and Modifiers of Proper Names in a Cross-linguistic Perspective” aims to contribute to this discussion by bringing together researchers working on proper names and determiners and proper names and different means of modification from a syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic perspective. The starting event of this research group will be a workshop in Cologne (May 2024), which will be followed by later academic events in Mexico and Uruguay.

 

 

Current Workshops

Workshop "Non-Bare Proper Names: Proper Names with Determiners and Modifiers in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective" 16-17 May 2024