Nominal category marking on personal names: A typological study of case and definiteness

Abstract

AbstractThis paper investigates differences in encoding the two nominal categories case and definiteness between proper nouns (more precisely anthroponyms) and common nouns, based on a maximally diverse 40-language sample. These differences can be found in a number of unrelated languages, though the majority of languages appear to not distinguish between proper and common nouns. However, this generalization has to be taken with a grain of salt, since the paper illustrates that differences between the two types of nouns can be very subtle and can thus be easily overlooked or left untreated in written grammars. Differences are either manifested in the overall absence of marking of a category on one type of nominal, or in distinct forms and/or conditions for the encoding.