Sense And Reference Of Proper Names

Since the mid-twentieth century, the rise of cognitive science provides a new perspective for traditional linguistics, philosophy and psychology. In this new perspective, many linguistic phenomena get new understandings. As an important topic in linguistics, philosophy of language and logic, sense and reference of proper names is of great theoretical significance. This paper attempts to examine sense and reference of proper names from a cognitive point,in order to reshape our understandings on meaning of proper names and provide new solutions to the fictitious names, reference shift and other issues about proper names.The paper firstly expounds its viewpoints about research on language and cognition. At present, approaches to studying language and cognition mainly includes Chomsky's Transformational Generative Grammar, Cognitive Linguistics and neurocognitive linguistics, particularly Lamb's theory. From an epistemological point, these theories share the same trait that the relationship between subject and object plays a central role in the cognition while the relationship between subjects is ignored. In other words, the psychological aspect of cognition is valued while social aspect is ignored in these theories. Based on the above observation and inspired by the social constructionism, this paper develops a theoretical framework which underlines the dominant role of relationship between subjects in cognitive construction. This serves as an academic starting point to probing sense and reference of proper names.Based on the concepts of icon, index and symbol in Pierce's theory, the paper analyzes the relationship between a proper name, its sense and its reference. On the basis of these elements it proposes an improved program about analysis on meaning of proper names. This improved program provides better solutions to the problems of fictitious names, reference shift and other issues about proper names than Description Theory and Historical Causal Naming Theory and expains well the difference between the attributive use and referential use of proper names, which demonstrates that it is more powerful in explaining relevant linguistic phenomena to analyse meaning of proper names in the perspective of social constructionism. The paper then discusses the naming and transmission of proper names. It claims that the study on language and cognition should focus on the role of social interaction, i.e. interaction between subjects. Framed by such views, the role of interaction between subjects in cognition is further explored. The same biological characteristics shared by the subjects involved in interaction is the basis to all kinds of communication. Individual's biological characteristics is, in essence, physical while communication is social, but this sociality develops on the biological characteristics shared by the subjects. Symbol is the nature of sign. Because of the biological characteristics shared by individual subjects, one individual becomes the symbol of the other, and this symbolism of cognitive subjects is the foundation of the symbolic nature of signs. From this theoretical perspective, study on cognition should focus on the relationship between cognitive subjects besides the relationship between subject and object.The above theory underpins our discussion on the naming and transmission of proper names. The paper firstly explains the nature of social construction in nonverbal strategy by analyzing action of"pointing". Then it puts forward the concept of meta-communication which is the key to a successful communication and analyses "this" and "that", i.e. logical names by Russell in the framework of meta-communication. Based on the above analysis, the nature of social construction in the process of naming and transmission of proper names is explored.The paper concludes that in a cognitive approach to language, not only the relationship between subject and object, but also to the relationship between subjects should be stressed. The research on the social nature of cognition is part of the cognitive study on language, which is complementary to the existing research in cognitive linguistics.