The morpho-syntax of phrasal proper names in German

Abstract

This paper studies the morpho-syntax of proper names like die Deutsche Bank ‘the German Bank’ in German. Semantically, these types of proper names, called phrasal proper names here, refer to entities but have descriptive meaning. Lexically, they are frozen and morpho-syntactically, they are frozen or transparent depending on the phenomenon. To capture these hybrid properties, it is proposed that regular vocabulary items are taken from the lexicon, that these individual elements receive each a referential marker (i.e., an index), and that they are stored as a set in the lexicon. Second, these indexed elements build a regular structure during the syntactic derivation projecting the marker to the entire structure. As is clear from proper names in Italian, certain syntactic operations are sensitive to these markers. As a consequence, these operations cannot single out the individual parts (but only the entire structure). Regular vocabulary items and an ordinary derivation explain the transparent properties; the addition of referential markers accounts for the referentiality and the frozen characteristics. The optional presence of non-restrictive modifiers shows that these nominal structures can be quite complex. Given this discussion, it seems unlikely that the referentiality of phrasal proper names is located in the DP-level.