Eponymy and life-narratives: The effect of foregrounding on proper names

Although the primary function of a proper name (PN) is to uniquely identify an individual, it can also be used to make attributive comments on individuals other than the PN-referent, e.g., Singapore is the Manhattan of Asia. Grammatically, eponyms can exhibit pluralization, modification, and in/definiteness contrast. This paper is concerned with eponymy in English, including paragon names, eponymic verbal nouns and denominal verbs, and denominal adjectives.In terms of the partitioned-narrative model of the self, a PN provides access to the totality of its referent's life-narratives available to the language-user. It is these life-narratives and their partitioned-representational nature which enable the PN's eponymic behaviors: one of the PN-referent's life-narratives is focused on to such an extent that the PN is used to designate this one life-narrative instead. This is the effect of foregrounding, and the life-narrative in focus constitutes the cognitive basis of eponymy, a type of metonymy.