专名修饰结构的逻辑问题

On the Logical Problem of Modified Proper Names

通过对英语和汉语语料中专名修饰结构的考察,可为专名的语义本质探索提供新的视角。专名不但能自由出现在主宾语的位置,还能被其他修饰语(如形容词短语、关系小句、介词短语等)所修饰。这一现象表明专名具有二元性:既可以产生个体的语义解读,也可以产生属性的语义解读。专名和属性有关的语义解读源于个体的时空特性:专名既可以指称整个个体,也可以指称个体的时空片段所组成的集合,而后者就是属性义的来源。这两种语义解读之间具有内在逻辑联系和转换关系:对个体进行分解能产生时空片段的语义;反之,对时空片段集合的最大化操作能还原个体。关于专名具有个体与属性的二元特性的分析,能在一定程度上缓和限定描述分析法和严格指示分析法之间的对立与冲突。

This paper attempts to shed light on the semantic nature of proper names by investigating modified proper names in naturally-occurring linguistic data from both English and Chinese.Besides freely appearing in argumental positions and being used as subjects or object of clauses,proper names can be modified by adjectival phrases,relative clauses,prepositional phrases,etc.This phenomenon indicates the duality nature of proper names:they can generate either an entity-based interpretation or a property-based interpretation.It is argued that the property-based meaning comes from the spatiotemporal nature of the denoted objects of proper names:we can either view the objects as a whole or view the objects as a set of spatiotemporal stages(i-stages)that instantiate the objects.These two meanings are mutually convertible:to decompose an entity yields a set of i-stages that realize the entity,while to maximize the set of i-stages yields the largest member of the set,i.e.,the entity itself.The present account promises to reconcile the tension between the definite description analysis and the rigid designator analysis.