Usage of Articles Before Proper Names in Contemporary Italian Language

Abstract

According to a basic grammatical rule, proper names in the contemporary Italian language are used without an article, but there are numerous exceptions that depend on semantic-syntactic factors and various regional, historical, and socio-cultural influences. This paper features situations that require the use of an article with proper names, with this article then becoming the carrier of certain meaning, so a special attention is paid to semantic-functional values of both using the article and leaving it out. We rely on the principles of generative grammar and structural analysis, and we analyse the use of an article in various positions and functions of a noun phrase in a sentence, with a view to categorising the phenomena observed, clarifying general rules on the use of an article with proper names, and pointing to new tendencies in the contemporary Italian language.