FULL-Names

While the predicate view of proper names is popular among linguists, it is not unanimous. This paper contributes to the discussion by considering some linguistic data exemplified by phrases such as “Operation Valkyrie” and “Operation Desert Storm”. These examples bring some clues about the structure of the phrasesthat help us understand the procedure involved in naming individuals. One is the gap between the first constituent (“operation”) and the second constituent (“Valkyrie”),which is filled by an abstract functional structure, as will be argued in this paper. These clues also lead us into two consequences: a) the difference between a definite description and a proper name is not so clear; b) the naming procedure is enabled by a complex syntactic-semantic mechanism within this gap.Our analysis shows that the predicate view provides accurate results for the data under analysis.