Recent research has shown that proper names may differ morphosyntactically from common nouns (see Schlücker & Ackermann 2017 for details). These morphological and syntactic differences are so striking that Nübling et al. (2015) speak of a specific "onymic grammar". However, little is known of the morphosyntactic contrasts between proper names and common nouns in less studied European and Non-European languages, or even from a cross-linguistic perspective. The goal of this workshop is to bring together papers that examine the morphological and syntactic patterns of proper names in opposition to common nouns in related and unrelated languages (and language families), from a descriptive, comparative-typological, or diachronic perspective.

Topics to be explored include language-specific and/or cross-linguistic differences between proper names and common nouns regarding:

• verbal agreement (cross-reference) of argument positions;
• word order of argument positions and/or non-arguments (adjuncts);
• topicalization and dislocation;
• differential case marking of arguments and/or non-arguments (adjuncts);
• inflection and word-formation (including allomorphy);
• gender assignment (e.g. Bantu languages);
• definite articles (e.g. Austronesian languages);
• modifiers;
• etc.

Grammatical phenomena that have received more attention in typology and that fall under these possible topics of the workshop are Differential Object Marking (DOM) and changes of alignment types in split ergative languages. In Old Spanish, for instance, DOM was obligatory with personal names while it was optional with human definite common nouns. In Corsican, by contrast, DOM occurs with proper names but not with common nouns. Furthermore, personal names pattern differently with regard to the alignment type in so-called split ergative languages. For example, Meriam Mer (a Papuan language of the Torres Strait region) has a nominative-accusative case marking pattern with personal pronouns and an ergative-absolutive marking pattern with common nouns. Proper names, on the other hand, have a three-way marking pattern with an ergative case for the A argument, absolutive case for the S argument, and an accusative case for the O argument (see Helmbrecht et al. 2018 for further examples and a discussion).

Additionally, proper names have been traditionally viewed as a homogeneous group. However, there is cross-linguistic evidence that an animacy-based classification of proper names comprised of deity names (theonyms), personal names (anthroponyms), animal names (zoonyms), and place names (toponyms) contributes to a better understanding of the distinct morphosyntactic patterns of proper names.

The workshop will enable us to explore the morphosyntactic differences between proper names and common nouns, and also to strive for semantic and pragmatic explanations of these differences. We invite submissions of abstracts that address the morphosyntactic contrasts between common nouns and proper names in a language or language family, cross-linguistically, or from a diachronic perspective.