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Proper nouns in English have a capital starting letter and the plural is simpler (e.g. -y ending gets -ys instead of -ies).

Are there any other differences? Especially when analysing/parsing the grammar?

So this question is about which grammatical consequences does it have to the rest of the sentence if I find a proper noun. For example, is there some grammar that works only with proper nouns? Or grammar that doesn't work with proper nouns?

The question is less about on how to distinguish them in general.

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DooDo
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  • Both of those are only differences in the spelling of proper nouns, not in their grammar. – brass tacks May 07 '15 at 09:08
  • @sumelic Yeah, that is my question. Are there any differences also in the grammar? – DooDo May 07 '15 at 09:16
  • How comprehensive an answer do you want? Is there any particular part of the grammar you're interested in? One difference is that proper nouns generally either have the definite article as part of them, or cannot be preceded by the definite article (this is sometimes called arthrous vs. anarthrous proper nouns; see this Language Log post for more info). http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4776 – brass tacks May 07 '15 at 09:21
  • @sumelic Thanks, that helps! Comprehensive is great. I am tagging/parsing text and I wonder if the information that a noun is proper can help me in any way to parse the text or if I can ignore that information at least for the parsing process? – DooDo May 07 '15 at 09:33
  • As I recall, in The Syntactic Phenomena of English, McCawley suggests that a proper noun takes up an entire NP (with the obvious exception of those taken to have various aspects -- "the Paris of the 1920s"). – Greg Lee May 07 '15 at 13:26
  • That would be a good reason why proper nouns either can't take any article at all (the Chicago*) or require an article (Hague*). Also, plural is rare for proper nouns -- generally they are specific, definite, and unique; there's only one Chicago. Proper nouns can be used as descriptions (three John Does in a row; can't we ever identify a corpse?) or even adjectives (That was very Cary Grant of you). – jlawler May 07 '15 at 14:37
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    possible duplicate of How are proper nouns distinguished from other nouns in linguistics (not in orthography)? – Alex B. May 08 '15 at 01:33
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    "Proper nouns in english [sic] have a capital starting letter" – fdb May 08 '15 at 09:04

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