Wolfram Hinzen
Linguistic Evidence Against Predicativism
Hinzen, Wolfram
Authors
Abstract
The view that proper names are uniformly predicates (‘predicativism’) has recently gained prominence. I review linguistic evidence against it. Overall, the (cross-) linguistic evidence suggests that proper names function as predicates when they appear in a grammatically predicative position and as referential expressions when they are grammatically in a referential position. Conceptual grounds on which the predicativist view might nonetheless be upheld include ‘uniformity’, i.e., that a single semantic value be lexically specified for names in all of their occurrences irrespective of differences in their grammar. However, ‘being a predicate’ or ‘being referential’ are not lexical properties of words but indications for how these grammatically function on an occasion of their use. Moreover, the intuitively referential and intuitively predicative uses of proper names precisely covary with grammatical differences. A proper name is therefore a predicate when it is predicatively used, not when its grammar and meaning are different. Given this grammar-meaning alignment there is no motivation to posit a novel ‘covert syntax’ for names in their referential uses, which breaks this alignment. Cross-linguistic evidence from languages such as Catalan, which features overt determiners in referential uses of proper names, moreover turns out to strongly support the view that the grammar of human language is systematically sensitive to differences in the referential and predicative uses of names
Citation
Hinzen, W. (2016). Linguistic Evidence Against Predicativism. Philosophy Compass, 11(10), 591-608. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12348
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Sep 13, 2016 |
Online Publication Date | Oct 7, 2016 |
Publication Date | Oct 7, 2016 |
Deposit Date | Sep 13, 2016 |
Publicly Available Date | Oct 12, 2016 |
Journal | Philosophy Compass |
Publisher | Wiley |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 11 |
Issue | 10 |
Pages | 591-608 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12348 |
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Copyright Statement
© 2016 The Authors. Philosophy Compass Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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