THE SEMANTICS OF PROPER NAMES AND OTHER BARE NOMINALS

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dc.contributor.advisorPietroski, Paul Men_US
dc.contributor.authorIzumi, Yuen_US
dc.contributor.departmentPhilosophyen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2013-02-07T07:05:40Z
dc.date.available2013-02-07T07:05:40Z
dc.date.issued2012en_US
dc.description.abstractThis research proposes a unified approach to the semantics of the so-called bare nominals, which include proper names (e.g., `Mary'), mass and plural terms (e.g., `water', `cats'), and articleless noun phrases in Japanese. I argue that bare nominals themselves are monadic predicates applicable to more than one particular, but they can constitute complex referential phrases when located within an appropriate linguistic environment. Bare nominals used as the subjects or objects of sentences are some or other variant of definite descriptions, which are analyzed as non-quantificational, referential expressions. The overarching thesis is that the semantic properties of bare nominal expressions such as rigidity are not inherent in the words themselves, but derived from the basic features of complex nominal phrases.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/13632
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPhilosophyen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledLinguisticsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledBare noun phrasesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledDefinite/indefinite descriptionsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledJapaneseen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledPhilosophy of languageen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledProper namesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledSemanticsen_US
dc.titleTHE SEMANTICS OF PROPER NAMES AND OTHER BARE NOMINALSen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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