Properhood

A history of the notion of PROPERHOOD in philosophy and linguistics is given. Two long-standing ideas, (i) that proper names have no sense, and (ii) that they are expressions whose purpose is to refer to individuals, cannot be made to work comprehensively while PROPER is understood as a subcategory of linguistic units, whether of lexemes or phrases. Phrases of the type the old vicarage, which are potentially ambiguous with regard to properhood, encourage the suggestion that PROPER is best understood as mode of reference contrasting with SEMANTIC reference; in the former, the intension/sense of any lexical items within the referring expression, and any entailments they give rise to, are canceled. PROPER NAMES are all those expressions that refer nonintensionally. Linguistic evidence is given that this opposition can be grammaticalized, speculation is made about its neurological basis, and psycholinguistic evidence is adduced in support. The PROPER NOUN,asa lexical category, is argued to be epiphenomenal on proper names as newly defined. Some consequences of the view that proper names have no sense in the act of reference are explored; they are not debarred from having senses (better: synchronic etymologies) accessible during other (meta)linguistic activities

Fetlar

This article rehearses the history of attempts to account for the name of the island of Fetlar in Shetland. It is concluded that explaining it as pre-Celtic is beset with philological difficulties, and that it is probably, after all, Scandinavian, though details of its etymology remain open to debate

Magiovinium, Dropshort Farm, near Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire

An investigation of this Romano-British place-name and possible Germanic analogues

A concise theory of meaningfulness in literary naming within the framework of The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood

No abstract

The name of the Hwicce: A discussion

This article presents the evidence for the Anglo-Saxon ethnic name Hwicce borne by a people of the south-west Midlands, and reviews previous unsatisfactory attempts to explain it. It appears to be probably of British Celtic origin, and an etymology in two variants, consistent in etymological meaning with that of other early ethnonyms, is suggested. © 2013 Cambridge University Press

The traditional dialect of Sussex

Part One consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 situates dialect, and dialect writing in particular, in relation to the history of the emergence of standard written English. Chapter 2 presents the contribution of academic linguists and philologists to the study of Sussex dialect. Chapter 3 is a discursive presentation of the Sussex material contained in the Survey of English Dialects and in the Linguistic atlas of England which derives from the Survey: i.e. essentially a presentation of the most characteristic non-standard features of the county’s dialect(s) and accent(s). Material from other sources is also drawn in. Chapter 4 discusses the work of those who have written in Sussex English, whether because they could not help it or because they chose to. The final chapter is about the meaning and significance of the traditional Sussex dialect, mainly at the time when it flourished most vigorously

Locus focus: forum of the Sussex Place-Names Net 1996-2007

Locus focus: newsletter (later forum) of the Sussex Place-Names Net was a roughly biannual periodical edited by Richard Coates at the University of Sussex between 1996 and 2002, with a final issue covering 2003-2007 produced at UWE Bristol. Fourteen issues were produced, which were circulated to interested parties and to local archives and libraries. They appear here digitized and indexed by Jack Fifield, UWE student of English Language and Linguistics in ACE (2017-20). ISSN 1366-617