Cover not available
Article published In:
From Culture to Language and Back: The Animacy Hierarchy in language and discourse
Edited by Laure Gardelle and Sandrine Sorlin
[International Journal of Language and Culture 5:2] 2018
► pp. 184–202

French anthroponyms as a heterogeneous category

Is there such a thing as personal nouns?

| University of Geneva

In natural languages, personal nouns (e.g., madame, ministre) are used very frequently and it is usually not very difficult to identify and interpret them in texts. If one tries to define them more precisely, however, one is confronted with a series of challenges. This contribution gives an overview of several types of difficulties that can be observed when trying to establish distinctions between personal nouns and other words. They are related to lexical differences between (personal) nouns and (personal) names, the referential boundaries of humanness, some morphological and semantic properties of French personal names, their syntactic behavior as personal nouns in French as well as the types of predications that may be used in order to distinguish between personal noun use and other uses. [1] 1

Keywords: French language, lexicology, personal nouns, personal names, categorization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.General remarks about French personal nouns and the data collection
    • Categorization of personal nouns
    • Data collection
  • 3.Nouns and names
  • 4.Reference
    • Referents that are not yet/or no longer human
    • Referents that belong to fictional and/or religious domains
    • Referents that are humans vs referents that are legal entities
  • 5.Morphology
    • Multiword expressions
  • 6.Polysemy and Homonymy
  • 7.Collective Nouns
  • 8.Syntax
  • 9.Predication
  • 10.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 June 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00006.elm
References

References

Braun, P.
(1997) Personenbezeichnungen: der Mensch in der deutschen Sprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckart, T., Elmiger, D., Kamber, A., & Quasthoff, U.
(2013) Frequency Dictionary French / Dictionnaire de fréquence du français. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Elmiger, D.
(2008) La féminisation de la langue en français et en allemand. Querelle entre spécialistes et réception par le grand public. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
(2013) Pourquoi le masculin à valeur générique est-il si tenace, en français? [Why is the generic masculine so tenacious in French?]. Romanica Olomucensia, 25(2), 113–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015) Les corpus Bundesblatt / Feuille fédérale / Foglio fédérale. V. 1.2. Geneva. Retrieved from [URL]
in preparation). Noms d’humains et adjectifs: quelles différences? [Personal nouns and adjectives: what differences?]. Proceedings of the Adjectivités conference (Paris, 7–9 September 2017).
Elmiger, D. & Kamber, A.
(2016) Du dictionnaire de fréquence au lexique pour les apprenant-e-s de FLE: l’exemple des adjectifs/noms communs de personnes [From the frequency dictionary to the lexicon for FLE learners: the example of adjectives/personal nouns]. Linguistik Online, 78(4), 55–74.Google Scholar
Elmiger, D., Tunger, V. & Schaeffer-Lacroix, E.
(2017) Geschlechtergerechte Behördentexte. Linguistische Untersuchungen und Stimmen zur Umsetzung in der mehrsprachigen Schweiz. Geneva: University of Geneva.Google Scholar
Gross, G.
(1995) À propos de la notion d’humain [About the notion of human]. In J. Labelle & C. Leclère (Eds.), Lexiques-grammaires comparés en français (pp. 71–80). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009) Sur le statut syntaxique des substantifs humains [On the syntactic status of human nouns]. In D. Leemann (Ed.), Des topoï à la théorie des stéréotypes en passant par la polyphonie et l’argumentation dans la langue. Hommages à Jean-Claude Anscombre (pp. 27–41). Chambéry: Presses de l’Université de Savoie.Google Scholar
Kerleroux, F.
(1996) La coupure invisible. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.Google Scholar
Leroy, Sarah
(2001): Entre identification et catégorisation, l’antonomase du nom propre en français . (Thèse de doctorat sous la direction de Paul Siblot. Montpellier: Université de Montpellier III.Google Scholar
Leroy, S.
(2004a) Le nom propre en français. Gap & Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
(2004b) De l’identification à la catégorisation. L’antonomase du nom propre en français. Louvain & Paris: Éditions Peeters.Google Scholar
Mihatsch, W. & Schnedecker, C.
(Eds.) (2015) Les noms d’humains: une catégorie à part? Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Molino, J.
(1982) Le nom propre dans la langue [The proper name in language]. Langages, 661, 5–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nübling, D., Fahlbusch, F. & Heuser, R.
(2015) Namen. Eine Einführung in die Onomastik. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Quasthoff, U., Fiedler, S., & Hallsteinsdóttir, E.
(2011) Frequency Dictionary German / Häufigkeitswörterbuch Deutsch. Leipzig: Leipziger Univeristätsverlag.Google Scholar
Racine, I., Andreassen, H. N. & Benetti, L.
(2016) Swiss French. In S. Detey, J. Durand & B. Laks (Eds.), Varieties of Spoken French (pp. 223–235). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schnedecker, C.
(2015) Les (noms d’) humains sont-ils à part? Intérêts linguistiques d’une sous-catégorie nominale encore marginale [Are human (names) separate? Linguistic interests of a still marginal nominal sub-category]. In W. Mihatsch & C. Schnedecker (Eds.), Les noms d’humains: une catégorie à part?. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Balnat, Vincent
2023. Madame Machin et Herr Dingsda  : les anthroponymes indéfinis en français et en allemand. Langages N° 232:4 ► pp. 9 ff. DOI logo
Zenner, Eline, Lisa Hilte, Ad Backus & Reinhild Vandekerckhove
2023. On sisters and zussen: integrating semasiological and onomasiological perspectives on the use of English person-reference nouns in Belgian-Dutch teenage chat messages. Folia Linguistica 57:2 ► pp. 449 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.