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Re: [engelang] Xorban Terminology





On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 5:11 PM, John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email> wrote:
 

Mike S. scripsit:



> As far as how "m" and "d" interact: I don't know if "m" was intended to
> entail definiteness, though pragmatically at least that could be the usual
> interpretation. That entailment is certainly not necessary though; plenty
> of natlangs incl Portuguese and ancient Greek generally require the
> definite article with proper names; others like French only sometimes e.g.
> "la France".

Proper names are always definite except in special cases like "a John Smith"
which just means a person named John Smith. This is independent of whether
they take articles or not: in English, Manhattan is as definite as the Bronx,
and Terra is as definite as the Moon.

Hmm, maybe I should have said that Portuguese and ancient Greek generally require the definite article with *names*?

Would it be accurate to say that ancient Greek and Portuguese generally treat names as common nouns needing the definite article, and English treat names as proper (names/nouns) inherently definite and not needing an article?