Proper Names as Triggers of Narratives

DOI

10.2991/iccessh-19.2019.217How to use a DOI?

Keywords

discourse; reference; denotation; proper name; discourse referent; file card; narrative

Abstract

What are meanings of proper names? The most popular understanding of the semantics of these expressions identifies their meanings with entities which they denote. But a name may denote nothing and nevertheless have meaning. There is a tendency in modern semantics to distinguish between denotations — things in the world which names denote, — and abstract entities which are elements of the discourses where the names are used, which those names introduce — so called discourse referents. An essential feature of these referents is that they are determined by discourses — finite sequences of utterances. From the point of view of authors of this approach definite expression like proper name always introduces something known from the previous discourse, whereas indefinite expressions introduces new content. But a definite expression may be not involved in some anaphoric relation with some other expression used in the discourse from which it could borrow its reference. In this case it is important to explain how proper name may introduce something known into a discourse. The author argues that in such cases the meanings of proper names are determined not by discourses where they are used, but by more complex sets of sentences involved in different discourses, which may be called narratives. He claims that in certain cases proper names are triggers of certain narratives which determine elements which they introduce into discourses and which may be called interdiscursive referents.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Alexei Cherniak
PY  - 2019/07
DA  - 2019/07
TI  - Proper Names as Triggers of Narratives
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 964
EP  - 968
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/iccessh-19.2019.217
DO  - 10.2991/iccessh-19.2019.217
ID  - Cherniak2019/07
ER  -