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The Syntax of Unique Identifiers: What Pronouns, Definite Articles, and Names Have in Common

by Don L. F. Nilsen

and Alleen Pace Nilsen

with help from Margaret Lee

and Willy Van Langendonck

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The Definite Article

The definite article can be used if and only if the noun it marks is unique (i.e. definite or defined).

The noun can become definite because of an antecedent, as in “I stumbled into a river; the river water was cold.”

Or the noun can become definite because of a postcedent, as in “I stumbled into the river that flowed through the town.”

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1st and 2nd Person Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns are deictic. They get their meanings from the context.

The first-person pronoun (I…) is the speaker. The speaker is determined by the linguistic or social context. In the case of the plural pronoun (we…), the speaker is speaking for a group. This is often called the “royal we.”

The second-person pronoun (you…) is the person(s) spoken to (i.e. the audience). The audience is determined by linguistic or social context.

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Third-Person Personal Pronouns

Third-person personal pronouns (it…) are the subject (what is talked about). They also get their meanings from the linguistic or social context.

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The Relative Pronoun

The relative pronouns are the “wh-words (which, where, when, why, who, how, and that). They get their meanings from their antecedents.

Note that “when” is also an adverb and a subordinate conjunction, and “why” is also an adverb and a noun.

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Interrogative Pronouns

The Interrogative Pronouns are also the “wh-words (which, where, why, when, who, and how). They get their meanings not from their antecedents, but rather from their postcedents, otherwise known as their answers.

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Reflexive and Intensive Pronouns

Relative and intensive pronouns also require antecedents, as in the following:

REFLEXIVE PRONOUN: “I hurt myself.”

INTENSIVE PRONOUN: “I myself finished the project.”

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The Demonstrative Pronoun

The demonstrative pronouns get their meanings from the social (not linguistic) context.

There are two singular ones: this & thatThere are two plural ones: these & thoseThere are two close ones: this and theseAnd there are two far ones: that and those

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Indefinite PronounsHalf of the Indefinite Pronouns are uniquely defined, and half are

not.

The Indefinite Pronouns relate to things (anything, nothing, something, everything), to places (anywhere, nowhere, somewhere, and everywhere), to time (ever, never, sometimes, and always), and to people (anybody, nobody, somebody, and everybody).

For each of these sets there is the null set (nothing, nowhere, never, and nobody), and the universal set (everything, everywhere, always, and everybody).

The other Indefinite Pronouns actually are indefinite. They include the following: anything, something, ever, somewhere, anywhere, sometimes, anybody, and somebody.

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Deixis of Place

Deictic expressions are unique identifiers, but they derive their unique meanings from the linguistic or social context.

Deictic expressions of place include such expressions as the following: back, before, behind, in front of, here, left, right, that place, there, these parks, this city, those towers over there, yonder mountains, etc.

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Deixis of Time

Deictic expressions of time include days of the week, months of the year, holidays, and such additional expressions as the following: after, before, last week, seven days ago, then, that time, tomorrow, two weeks from now, next April, last Thanksgiving, etc.

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Analogies between Time and Place

There is a strong correlation between deixis of time and deixis of place, because we move through time and space at the same time.

Thus, such words as after, before, and then can refer either to time or to place.

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Zeroing in: in, on, and at

This is also true of prepositions. In, on, and at are becoming more and more specific both in space and time.

A person might live “in Arizona,” “on Alameda Drive,” and “at 1884 East Alameda Drive.”

Likewise, a person might be born “in 1934,” “on October 19, 1934,” and “at 4 PM on October 19th, 1934.”

Proper Nouns vs. Proprial Lemas: An Aside by Willy Van Langendonck

In his Theory and Typology of Proper Nouns, Willy Van Langendonck makes a distinction between “proper nouns” and “proporial lemas.”

In an e-mail, he explained, “ ‘John came home’ supposes unique identification at the level of “established linguistic convention” a la Langacker as well as on the level of language use. But since there are more Johns, you can say that ‘John’ is a proprial lema as well, i.e. an onomastic dictionary entry (cf. ‘John is a forename’.”

“In addition, names inhere a basic level presupposition, e.g., ‘London is a city / the City of London.’ This is essential to grasp the reference of the name. (This was argued for independently by philosophers (first peter Geach 1957, also John Searle), psychologists, neurologists (Carlo Semenza in Mind and Language 2009), linguists, and onomasts).”

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“Names can also have so-called connotations that come in via the referent (e.g., “Napoleon lost at Waterloo”), or via the name-form (e.g., “Bern-hard” ‘strong as a bear’).”

“In family-names you find only historical meanings (which may still be transparent, as in ‘Baker’). But what about ‘Cameron’ or ‘McCain,” etc.? Therefore, we should distinguish between synchronic and diachronic meaning. The synchronic meaning is limited to a basic level presupposition, and some possible connotations.”

“Names have no asserted meaning as in common nouns, which display coherent polysemy. In names, we find incoherent and contingent senses, such as ‘Obama is slim, Obama is President, Obama has a wife,” etc. (see also the Italian neurolinguist Carlo Semenza).”

Now back to my own argument, using my own operational definitions for “common nouns” vs. “proper nouns”:

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Names as Unique Identifiers

During the middle ages, societies were very small, and one name would do as a unique identifier.

But as societies became larger, people needed to add a surname (sur means “over and above” as in surcharge) in order for the name to be a unique identifier.

At first these surnames were just attributions, and usually they came in one of four varieties

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Descriptive Surnames

Descriptive surnames include the following: Armstrong, Ballard, Belcher, Black, Brown, Gross, LeGrande, Longfellow, Newman, Powers, Redman, Schwartzenegger, Truman, White, etc.

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Surnames of Place

Surnames of place include the following: Atwater, Bankhead, Banks, Churchill, Eastwood, Ekberg, Ford, Goldberg, Hill, Mondale, North, Oakland, Rivers, Sutherland, Underwood, West, Woodruff, etc.

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Surnames of Occupations

Occupational surnames include the following: Arrowsmith, Baker, Barker, Cantor, Carpenter, Carter, Cooper, Fletcher, Forrester, Herald, Miller, Mueller, Parker, Sawyer, Sellers, Smith, Tailor, Tanner, Thatcher, Waggoner, Wainwright, Wheelwright, Wickman, etc.

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Family and Tribal Surnames

Family and tribal surnames include the following: Ben Gurion, Colavitch, Ebnascena, Fitzpatrick, Gutierrez, MacDonald, etc.

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And sometimes we need even more than surnames if our names are to identify uniquely

So we have:

John Jones Junior

John Jones III

Henry VIII and

Louis XIV

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When is a name not a name?

If we assume that it is the function of a name to uniquely identify a particular person, (not to mention a particular place, or thing)

Then we start with a first name.Then we may have to add a Jr.Or we may have to add a number like XIVAnd we have to capitalize both first and last names, so

we will see them as proper nouns, not common nouns.

But even that doesn’t always work.

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…because there are Generic Eponyms:These names are not Unique Identifiers

Tom, Dick, and HarryJack: jacks (the game), jacket, jacket of a book,

etc.JOE: GI Joe, Holy Joe (chaplain), Joe Camel,

Joe Cool, Joe Schmo, Joe Six-Pack, Joe the Plumber

John Doe, Jane Roe (as in Roe vs. Wade), Dear John Letter, john (the toilet) Johnny Reb, long johns, a prostitute’s john

John Bull and Uncle Sam

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…and there are Googlegangers:These names are not Unique Identifiers

Have you ever googled your own name and found that someone else owned it?

If you google a doppleganger, this is called a “googleganger. Googlegangers have been around for a long time.

Babe Ruth was the daughter of President Grover Cleveland, but this is also the name of a baseball player and a candy bar)

David Copperfield is a Dickens character and a magicianThe first cloned sheep was named Dolly, after Dolly Parton, because it

was cloned from a mamary gland.Englebert Humperdink was a classical composer and a rock musician.Tom Jones is a character in a Fielding novel, and also a rock musician.Madonna was originally thought to be a name for the mother of Christ.Marx and Lenin could refer to Karl Marx and Joseph Lenin, or it could

refer to Groucho Marx and John Lennon.

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…and there is Le Jacquerie in Charles Dickens’The Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is about the common people rising to power against the aristocracy.

The common people didn’t deserve to have a name, so there are three commoners in this novel with almost the same name: Jacques I, Jacques II, and Jacques III.

Since they were not part of the aristocracy, they were part of “le jacquerie.”

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The Jacquerie in Neal Gaiman’sThe Graveyard Book

There is also a “Jacquerie” in Neal Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book:

There is a prophesy that Nobody Owens will kill the Jacks of all trades:

There is Jack Tar.There is Jack Dandy.There is Jack be Nimble.There is Jack Ketch.And there is “the man Jack,” whose real name is Jack Frost.

And they are all trying to kill Nobody Owens.

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!! Conclusion # 1

So in conclusion, there are unique identifiers that are not names

like the definite article the,

and like the personal, relative, intensive, and reflexive pronouns that have antecedents

and like the interrogative pronouns that have postcedents (the answers).

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III Conclusion # 2

And there are names that are not unique identifiers,

like “le jacquerie,”

and like generic eponyms,

and like googlegangers.

Go figure!

Reference:

Van Langendonck, Willy. Theory and Typology of Proper Names. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007.

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