Härtl, Holden (2020) Referring nouns in name-informing quotation: A copula-based approach

Abstract.In name-informing constructions like The phenomenon is called a “sun halo”,the nounmentioned in the quotation(a “sun halo”)adopts a referring interpretation,as indicated by the determiner.As an account, we claim predicates like callto introduce a copular rela-tion, which is the source of referring uses of nominals in name-informing quotation:To call y“n”entails that yis an n. Two copula typesare argued to becovertly containedin name-in-forming constructions, an identificational copula andan equativecopula, and we put forward linguistic evidence in support of this distinction. Further, corpus data show thatnounsquoted in a name-informing construction are more prone to be used with quotes whenaccompanied by a determiner. We interpret this to reflect a pragmatic strategy employed to highlight the expression’s mentioning use.Lastly, the quotations under discussion are differentiated from other types of quotation. Specifically, name-informing quotationsare treated asinstantiationsof pure quotation, which we reason to be entailed compositionallyand, although they can be referential hybrids, should not be subsumedeither under open or mixed quotation.