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Mike S., On 28/09/2012 00:29:
On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 5:11 PM, John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email <mailto: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.
There are nonspecial cases like: A reinvigorated John Cowan appeared before me. The young John Cowan frequented the purlieus of Hoboken. [arbitrary exx, not biographically accurate] Proper nouns are common nouns that because of their meaning tend to be used and conceptualized as generics (MSs). Nouns expressing categories that are singleton at their basic level are genericized without an article (metal, Wednesday, John Cowan, scarlet, B-flat).
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?
Proper nouns aren't inherently definite, but their generic versions are, noncontrastively. As John has noted, languages differ as to whether they mark noncontrastive definiteness with a definite article and as to the conditions under which a definite article is applied to a proper noun. --And.