Tuesday, June 27, 2006

 

Inverted Commas and Names

I am Daniel Hill. I am a person. I have a name. A name is a linguistic item. I am not a linguistic item. It is therefore false for me to say:
My name is Daniel Hill
The reason why this would be false is that we could then conclude that I was my name, which is false. Instead, we (well, I) should say:

My name is 'Daniel Hill'.
Here the inverted commas ensure that the name is quoted rather than merely used.

# posted by Daniel Hill @ 3:23 pm
Comments:
Thanks, Michael. Your yahoo e-mail account keeps rejecting my messages by the way: are you still using the Manchester one? If so, please remind me what it is.
# posted by Blogger Daniel Hill : 10:37 am
 
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