The city of Montevideo will host the third edition of a growing international workshop series devoted to the semantics, syntax, and pragmatics of proper names - particularly those that appear with determiners and modifiers across languages. Titled “Non-Bare Proper Names III: Proper Names with Determiners and Modifiers in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective,” the workshop continues a cutting-edge line of inquiry that intersects philosophy, linguistic typology, and formal grammar.
This event is part of the collaborative research project “Proper Names with Determiners and Modifiers in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective,” whose aim is to deepen theoretical understanding of how languages treat proper names that are not “bare,” i.e., those that occur with articles, adjectives, honorifics, or other modifiers. Building on past workshops in Cologne (2024) and Mexico City (2025), the Montevideo meeting brings the project’s third international gathering to Latin America once again.
🎓 A Rich Theoretical Framework
Over the past decades, proper names have emerged as a central object of study in both philosophical semantics (Frege, Russell, Kripke) and formal linguistics (Matushansky, Elbourne, Fara). More recently, there has been a surge of interest in how names behave syntactically and morphologically within the nominal phrase, especially in languages that allow non-bare forms - names with definite or indefinite articles, possessives, adjectives, or honorifics.
Cross-linguistic research has revealed rich variation in this area. From Romance languages to Germanic, from Turkic to Bantu, languages diverge in how (and whether) they mark definiteness, gender, specificity, or respect through syntactic elements attached to proper names. This workshop aims to connect these empirical observations to theoretical debates in syntax, morphology, and reference.
🧠 Invited Speakers
The Montevideo event will feature keynote lectures from three leading scholars in the field:
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Antonio Fábregas
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Brenda Laca
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Laura Kornfeld
Their work spans morphosyntax, semantics, and comparative grammar, and their talks are expected to highlight new approaches to how proper names are structured and interpreted across languages.
🔬 Project Collaborators
The workshop is coordinated by an interdisciplinary and international research team:
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Ana Aguilar Guevara (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
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Timo Buchholz (Universität zu Köln)
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Rafael Herrera Jiménez (UNAM)
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Klaus von Heusinger (Universität zu Köln)
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Carolina Oggiani (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
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Julia Pozas Loyo (El Colegio de México)
🌎 Practical Info for Participants
The workshop will be held March 23–24, 2026 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Further venue and logistical details will be made available soon. For participants traveling internationally, information on visas and transport will be updated on the official workshop website.
Previous editions offered not only a rich intellectual atmosphere but also carefully organized local support to ensure safe and comfortable travel, including guidance on secure airport transport and city mobility. As with earlier meetings, participants can expect a collegial and stimulating environment, with opportunities for informal exchange and future collaboration.
💡 Why It Matters
The question of how names function in natural language is far from trivial - it touches on how we refer to individuals, how we encode social information, and how different languages construct identity and specificity. In connecting formal theory with empirical diversity, the Non-Bare Proper Names workshop series is reshaping our understanding of the boundaries between proper and common nouns, and between language-internal structure and cross-cultural naming practices.
Stay tuned for the full program, abstract submissions, and travel details. Montevideo awaits - offering both a scholarly destination and a rich multilingual backdrop for the next chapter in the onomastic dialogue.
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