Volume 51, Issue 2 - Special Issue: The morphosyntax of proper names, Guest editors: Tanja Ackermann and Barbara Schlücker

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the topics and recent developments in the research on the morphosyntax of proper names. The article reflects on the ways in which and the reasons why proper names may be morphosyntactically different from common nouns. It argues that the distinction between proper names and proper nouns is essential for the discussion of the topic, and it shows that there are considerable differences regarding morphological and syntactic properties both among the various name classes as well as cross-linguistically. In the second part of the paper, selected aspects dealt with in the recent literature are discussed in more detail, including those on the morphological and syntactic properties of proper names and proper nouns, and the specific morphosyntactic constructions proper names and proper nouns can occur in.

The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, it shows that the history of German proper name inflection is a story of profound change. Proper names started out being inflected like common nouns; later, the reduction of their inflectional endings eventually resulted in a distinct declension class of proper names. Furthermore, gender assignment in proper names is different from that of common nouns, and today proper names may be accompanied by classifiers that have evolved from the definite article. Additionally, proper names show particularities concerning their syntactical behavior, word-formation processes, and orthography. While (most of) these developments provide evidence for change, they can, at the same time, be functionally interpreted as strategies to preserve the name shape for reasons of recognition. A second aim of this article is therefore to show that, as proper names are specific linguistic units, they deserve specific treatment. Most of the changes serve to stabilize the “name body” (schema consistency) and to mark morphological boundaries.

The article presents a morphosyntactic analysis of personal names in Modern Hebrew, with emphasis on gender characteristics. In fact, Hebrew uses existing words for personal names, and we would expect grammatical rules to apply to names in the same manner as they apply to other words. Almost all words in the language are gender distinguished, meaning that they must be either masculine or feminine, with no neuter form, and full syntactic agreement for gender is required. While masculine words are unmarked, feminine nouns, adjectives, and participles are marked by the suffixes - a or -(V) t . Verbs and inflected prepositions present a gender differentiation as well. However, although personal names originate from these parts of speech or a combination thereof, it appears that they are not subject to all grammatical rules. Semantic differentiations for gender that were used once are now no longer evident. The most salient finding of the present study is that the new trend for personal names is to use less diversification regarding parts of speech. It mostly uses masculine nouns for both sexes, without gender markers or formal syntactic agreement. Consequently, morphosyntactic differentiations tend to disappear, turning masculine nouns into generic names and implying a process of masculinization.

The present article is positioned at the interface between onomastics and word formation. It examines the German adjective-forming suffix - isch , which combines with proper names ( Lutherisch ‘Lutheran’) as well as with common nouns ( höllisch ‘hellish’). Making use of diachronic corpora of German, the development of - isch is studied with respect to different appellative and onymic base classes. Based on graphematic evidence as well as on their referential properties, these base classes are arranged on a scale of onymicity. The most name-like categories are examined more closely. First, utilizing the distinction qualifying adjectives vs. descriptive adjectives, adjectival derivatives from personal names in German are contrasted with those in English. Furthermore, for family name as well as town name bases, diachronic variation in productivity shifts of - isch -derivatives and competing derivational patterns is investigated. Based on the results, it can be hypothesized that the more name-like the words are, the more instability is to be expected in the diachronic derivational patterns, also observable in a high degree of cross-linguistic variation.

This paper explores the distribution of proper names in construct phrases in Modern Hebrew, and uses the construct phrase as a diagnostic for distinguishing both different types of proper names and different uses of proper names. It is shown that in Modern Hebrew (i) personal proper names and definite descriptions have different grammatical properties; (ii) within the category of personal proper names, different usages can be distinguished; (iii) proper names of places (toponyms) and personal proper names have very different grammatical properties.

This study provides evidence in favor of a Special Toponymic Grammar by discussing instances of zero-marking of spatial relations in selected languages, with special focus on Maltese. It is shown that zero-marking is often a privilege of toponyms, which sets them apart from common nouns. Special attention is paid to the differential behavior of sub-classes of toponyms and their (dis)similarity to common nouns. The most appropriate way of capturing the observed structural variation within and across languages is that of the continuum.

This 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.