Nomes próprios: análise de antropônimos do espanhol escrito

Abstract

The main purpose of this work is to present an analysis of the different uses of anthroponyms (proper names) in contemporary written Spanish texts. At the outset, issues related to meaning and reference are discussed, recovering classic theories about proper names which have been developed since the XIX Century mainly by logicians and philosophers: the descriptivist theory or the meaning theory and the direct referential theory or causal theory. Regarding grammatical studies, a group of assumptions by Kleiber (1981) are exposed, with emphasis on the ideas about predicate of denomination and modified proper names which are basis for several studies by current linguists who are dedicated to this theme (Fernandez Leborans, 1999a; Gary-Prieur, 1994; Gary-Prieur, 2001; Jonasson, 1994; Leroy, 2004; among others). Different proposals for classification of proper names are also discussed here. This theoretical framework enables the presentation of important definitions for the analysis such as anthroponym, referent and ordinary referential use of anthroponym. To accomplish our goal, we gathered a corpus composed by texts from the section Entretenimientos (Espectaculos) published on the web page of the Argentinian newspaper La Nacion during July 2005. Due to the complications caused by the expression modified proper name – in accordance with recent works (Gary-Prieur, 2005; Kleiber, 2006; Noailly, 2000) –, the analysis here disregards this expression. Based on semantic criteria (related to reference), without nevertheless abandoning the syntactic ones, three groups of anthroponymic uses are identified. Their occurrences are presented in a continuous referential which is based on the reference to the subject that bears the proper name. The first group is composed by cases in which the referent of the anthroponymic NP is identified to the initial bearer of the antroponym. In the second group, there are cases in which the anthroponymic NP does not correspond to the initial bearer, but keeps a relationship with this one that may arise from properties or products. In the third group, without authentic cases of anthroponyms, there are occurrences in which the discursive referent of the NP does not have any relationship with the subject that bears the proper name. Beyond offering a new classification for the use of anthroponyms, this work revisits the notion of modified proper name, postulates a proper use of anthroponym related to nomination, and attests that analysis of proper names must consider the whole syntactic and semantic diversity of the constructions in which they appear.