Anthroponyms (people’s names) are inherently definite when used referentially and in most European languages do not syntactically require a determiner (Lyons 1999; Abbott 2002 inter alia). However, determiners do appear with names cross-linguistically (e.g. (1)-(2)) and until Christodulelis (2016, 2017) only simplistic descriptions of an “affective” or “emotive” tone were offered to explain their occurrence (Maiden & Robustelli 2000; Cunha & Cintra 2001; Bechara 2006; Van Langendonck 2007). The present study builds on Christodulelis’s work on definite articles with anthroponyms in Spanish by expanding its application to a broader array of name-marking strategies and to a variety of European languages.

 

Bulgarian

< >Marija-ta                                    beshe                   tukMarija-def.art.fem.sg             be-3.sg.past       here

‘Marija was here.’

 

Greek

< >I                                    Maria    mu         irthe                              símera.def.art.fem.sg           Maria    my          come-3. sg.past        today

‘My Maria came today.’

 

Under Christodulelis’s treatment, definite articles with names in Spanish produce a conventional implicature (CI) (Potts 2007) of the speaker’s non-neutrality toward the referent and furthermore generate a particularized conversational implicature (PCI) that conveys the precise attitude (e.g. contempt, adoration, amusement, etc.). This study examines demonstratives, possessives, and diminutive suffixes with anthroponyms and proposes that they, too, produce two types of implicature.

 

I propose that the CI for possessives (e.g. (2)) is familial relationship, for demonstratives ((3)-(4)) is non-neutrality, and for diminutive suffixes ((5)-(6)) is smallness. For each of these, the potential PCIs are heavily context-sensitive (underscored by the ellipses in (3) and (4)).

 

< >[You learn that John ate the cookies intended for a bake sale:] That John...

 

< >[John has sent you a bouquet of flowers:] That John...

 

Spanish

   
< >[A grandmother says about her granddaughter Lupe:]Lupita           vino                                     a             visitarme.

Lupe.dim      come-3.sg.past  to           visit-me

‘Lupita came to visit me.’

 

< >[A high school student says of a teacher named Pedro, whom he does not respect:]Al                                                 final       Pedrito está               aquí       hoy.

at- def.art.masc.sg   end        Pedro.dim            be-3.sg.pres        here       today

‘Pedrito is here after all.’

 

This study expands the body of research on determiners and their context-sensitive meanings by examining cases where already-definite NPs get further marked, either by another definite element or by an additional morpheme signaling some kind of further familiarity. More broadly, it contributes to our understanding of CIs and the wide variety of structures that produce them. And finally, it provides support for a new theoretical framework to account for other phenomena heretofore labeled as “affective,” which have largely been ignored in the literature but have ample insight to offer.

 

This abstract falls under the Pragmatics Theories portion of the conference, and I would like it to be considered for traditional presentation.

 

 

References

 

Abbott, Barbara. 2002. Definiteness and proper names: some bad news for the description theory. Journal of Semantics 19.191-201.

Bechara, Evanildo. 2006. Moderna gramática portuguesa (37th ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Editora Lucerna.

Christodulelis, Eleni. 2016. Definite determiners with anthroponyms in Mexican Spanish as (Anti-) Honorifics. Paper presented at AMPRA 2016, Bloomington, Indiana.

----------------. 2017. Definite articles with anthroponyms across varieties of Spanish: quantitative support of conventional & conversational implicature. Paper presented at the 2017 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Lubbock, Texas.

Cunha, Celso, and Lindley Cintra. 2001. Nova gramática do português contemporâneo (3rd ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira.

Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Maiden, Martin, and Cecilia Robustelli. 2000. A reference grammar of modern Italian. Chicago: NTC Publishing Group.

Potts, Chris. 2007. Into the conventional-implicature dimension. Philosophy Compass 2.665-679.

Van Langendonck, Willy. 2007. Theory and typology of proper names. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.