Proper Names as Triggers of Narratives
作者单位：Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Peoples' Friendship University of Russia
会议日期：2019年
学科分类：0501[文学-中国语言文学] 0303[法学-社会学] 050102[文学-语言学及应用语言学] 03[法学] 030303[法学-人类学] 05[文学]
摘 要：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.