The Pragmatics and Cognition of Naming

Book excerpt: This book deals with proper names, their importance, their use, how they designate, the way they are cognized, and other related issues. It investigates such questions as: Which linguistic expressions count as proper names? Why do we need names to begin with? How do they work within natural languages? What role do they play within a linguistic community? How do they relate to their bearers? How do they combine with other linguistic categories in building well-formed sentences? How do they differ from other linguistic terms? In doing so, the book focuses on the use of names both in our thoughts (as devices that allow us to entertain singular thoughts) and communicative interchanges (as tools we use to single out objects of discourse and convey information about them).