Talk:Proper noun

Are proper nouns part of the language in which they are used

I have changed the lead slightly to emphasise the point that a proper noun is part of the language in which it is used. This follows discussion at Talk:Kraft Dinner#Requested move 2011 in which this has been disputed.

The point was already made later in the lead, and I would previously have thought it safe to presuppose it, but evidently not. The early lead did previously make this presupposition. Of course, not all languages even have proper nouns as such, and not all languages mark them with capitalisation the way English does.

Or does someone here wish to put the opposite case? Andrewa (talk) 20:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Sesquipedalian loquaciousness

Goodness, this article contains some overblown language. Worst case is probably:

Mary lives on Floor 3 of the Main Building. (same information content but recast cognitively as proper names. There is no etic difference except the cognitive one of the specificity that the capitalization imbues. It establishes an implicit sense that "within our commonly understood context [the building complex that we are standing in], the main building being referenced is the only main building. It is a unique object [as far as our context is concerned].)

What's wrong with saying "in this context, the capitalization shows that 'Main Building' is the name of the building, not just a description" (or words to that effect)? Wardog (talk) 15:38, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

There's a solid reason why the current wording was chosen, in terms of what it's trying to emphasize and explain, although (1) it's true that it flies over the heads of most readers and (2) there's probably room for shortening, if done right. The way it's written explains what's happening in terms of the cognition involved. Your suggested version seems good on the surface, but by itself it doesn't touch the reasons why what it says is true, or the nature of the difference between name and description. In fact, the whole reason why there is a blurry spectrum rather than a quantum dividing line between proper and common senses of a given noun (in other words, the reason why it's true, as said in the article, that "Because the orthographic classification has room for various implicit cognitive frames, it is somewhat arbitrary, which is to say, individuals can make different choices without either one being "wrong", and they cannot easily describe to each other their differing frames, because of the implicitness") is because the line between name and description is slippery—if you try to write an operational definition to cover all the cases (of differentiation), it fails, because the cases are of various subtypes. The best solution in the end may be to provide both as tersely as possible—the version you suggested, which is digestible although incomplete/vague, and a revision of the current wording that still emphasizes the cognition details but maybe manages to be shorter. I'll see about taking a crack at it. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:36, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

... although I must admit, the longer I think about your suggested revision, the more I like it. It's quite cogent, and I'm starting to wonder whether my concerns about it are moot for >99% of readers. I mean, I already know (versus "starting to wonder") that a short, easily digested, imprecise sentence is pedagogically much superior to a long, challenging, precise paragraph, in the context of a general readership, although it would fall short in technical documentation for failing to convey non-negligible technical information. That first half of that sentence is why your complaint is so valid. I'm not ready to give up on the precise part, but I think the easily digested part should be our first (and more important) statement. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:47, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Informal proper nouns

One issue that isn't addressed here is informal proper nouns. Many examples given here simply illustrate the obvious i.e. the difference between the "main building" and the "Main Building". But what about names that aren't formal titles but refer to unique entities. For example:

• The moon. Capitalisation is only use in astronomical contexts. Partly this is because historically and literarily many moons have been conceived of: the harvest moon, the crescent moon, the full moon etc. But actually there's only one. It's unique. So why isn't it a proper noun?
• The sun. Ditto.
• The US government. Or Government. It's not an official title, but it is a commonplace one, and it is unique.
• Commonly accepted nicknames for people or key events. The only example I can think of is Australian, where the media wrote about the "children overboard affair" - not a proper noun?
• The seasons. Not generally capitalised though months are. Though perhaps again traditionally considered multiple, i.e., a mild winter.

Has there been any analysis of this issue?--Jack Upland (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

The "moon/Moon" question (and sun/Sun, govt/Govt) is already addressed pretty well in the article, in my opinion; but you may be needing another element to complete the picture. The answer is along the lines that you're mentioning, i.e., the shift from a common-noun sense (e.g., "Titan is a moon of Saturn, and one of dozens of moons in our solar system") to a proper noun sense (e.g., the Earth only has one moon, which is called "the Moon" in English). Same with sun/Sun and govt/Govt. ("The U.S.'s federal government is often called by the name "the Federal Government.") It depends on what the speaker is referring to in any given sentence. I think maybe what's bothering you (I could be misinterpreting) is that some people, even when they mean the unique sense, *still* use a lowercase letter. And dictionaries don't label that as "wrong" (in fact, they enter it as an acceptable variant). So your question might be, why is this not "wrong"? The answer lies in the existence of the description/prescription spectrum. It's an epistemological question; it has to do with how anyone defines what's "correct" or "incorrect". There is no single universal answer, but rather a set of answers. If all speakers of English would agree to follow a certain logical instruction, namely that the "unique sense" be capitalized, then one could say that people who failed to do that were doing something "wrong". However, the thing about language is that its epistemological foundation is one of consensus usage, because it is only a coding system where symbols are agreed to stand for ideas. If enough people agree (implicitly or explicitly, planned or unplanned) that the word moon with lowercase can refer to the Earth's one moon, as the orthographic representation of its name, then it is "correct" to use it, by that very definition. It would be as if Samuel Morse, in building Morse code, had declared that 6 dots plus 8 dashes represented the idea "banana". It would be correct because the definition-maker said it was correct. In natural language, lexicographers (the people who make dictionaries) don't have the power to dictate to all speakers of the language what the definition will be. They can try to suggest and encourage, but in the end, if people widely do something different, a dictionary needs to record what they also do besides the "preferred" variant. Language academies are intended to be institutions with some amount of standards-defining power, like a standards organization for standard languages, but standard languages in reality only are influenced by, compete against, and influence natural languages; they never quite replace them (despite anyone's hopes that they might). But all of the above is something that few people outside the field of linguistics understand properly, because the educational system has traditionally not been informed by any applied science version of linguistic science—which it is now overdue to begin correcting. In the meantime, almost no one who learned traditional grammar in school is equipped to understand the "correct-versus-wrong" discussion properly. So the answer to your final question, "Has there been any analysis of this issue?", is that (1) there definitely has not been within traditional grammar, which was never equipped to deal with it, epistemologically, because the idea that there's a "one correct way" in natural language is not even true, in reality (there is only "should be" versus "is"); and (2) there may well have already been such analysis within the field of linguistic science, which a literature search of the field by someone who fully understands its jargon could determine; but if so, only linguistics PhDs know about it so far, and they haven't brought any of that knowledgebase to Wikipedia yet. Hopefully they will over the next decade or two. I hope this reply is of some value toward answering your questions. Regards, Quercus solaris (talk) 16:40, 1 July 2011 (UTC)