Determined Proper Nouns in Rioplatense Spanish express interpersonal proximity

Abstract

Following the referentialist view on proper nouns, based on Kripke (1980), they are expressions of type , pointing out to entities directly, without providing a description of those entities (cf. Kaplan 1989, Soames 2002, Jeshion 2015, Saab & Lo Guercio 2018). Proper nouns preceded by the definite article in Rioplatense Spanish challenge this approach because the definite article, of type >, is neither combining with an NP of type , nor contributing with its propositional meaning, namely, definiteness. In this squib, we tackle this challenge by proposing that the article preceding a proper noun in Rioplatense Spanish is an expletive of type (Longobardi 1994; Saab 2021; Tsiakmakis & Espinal 2022), which brings along the expressive meaning of interpersonal proximity by activating the interactional structure above the DP (a là Wiltschko 2021).

Keywords

• Rioplatense Spanish
• Definite articles
• expressive meaning
• expletives