Naming and Economy

The aim of this paper is to provide a semantic alternative to the account of modified proper names discussed in Kayne (1994). Whereas the latter takes the relevant facts to speak in favor of a head-raising analysis of relative clauses, the semantic alternative offered here can do without such an analysis. The main ingredients of the theory developed here are (i) a generalization of the "blocking principle" of Chierchia (1998) and (ii) an appeal to a part/stage ontology for the analysis of the meaning of proper names along the lines of Paul (1994).