J.S. Mill argued for the exceptional status of proper names (eg. 'John'). The authoress proposes three possible interpretations of Mill's claim: (1) proper names are exceptional in that they do not have meaning of the sort that common names (eg. 'man') have; (2) proper names are special in that they do not have meaning in the way other words have meaning; (3) proper names are exceptional in not having meaning at all. The paper's main objective is to examine Mill's claim in the light of modern semantic theories and to discuss different views about how proper names should best be formally represented in a truth-theory for a natural languge: the Individual Constant View, the Variable View and the Predicate View.
The paper discusses Quine's views on quotation and attitude reports within the context of the debate on linguistic metarepresentations and their place in the architecture of language and mind. The author argues for the hypothesis that linguistic metarepresentations involve a special kind of language performance, one which makes special cognitive demands.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.