PROPER NAMES AND PREDICATION

The paper investigates the interplay between the word class of proper names and the function of predication, aiming at clarify whether names are allowed to fulfill the role of predicates in copular sentences and in other contexts requiring non-argumental nominal phrases. The data, drawn from Italian, are discussed in order to establish under which circumstances proper names may serve as predicates, and what is their configurational status. Mostly adopting a formalist approach, both syntactic and semantic properties of names are taken into account, showing that their employ in predicative phrases is much more constrained and problematic than generally assumed.