Abstract
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.
Highlights
It has long been observed that proper names and common nouns have different inflectional behavior.1(1) a. child → children b
There are definite usages of bare singular count nouns that have the same distribution as proper names, key evidence in favor of the proper determiner merging with common nouns
At least two cases of inflectional regularization can be captured with n[NAME] as the initial categorizing head of a root: proper names and nouns that are “named” after other nouns
Summary
It has long been observed that proper names and common nouns have different inflectional behavior.1(1) a. child → children b. It has long been observed that proper names and common nouns have different inflectional behavior.1 (1) a. The evidence for a [PROPER] feature on D is found in languages like English and Spanish, where proper names occur as bare arguments (Diana ran), unlike singular count nouns (*woman ran).
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