Pedagogical implications of Prototype Theory for the writing of English grammar textbooks: the case of proper names

Traditional grammarians classify proper names and common nouns into two dis­crete categories. The present study, which is based on a sample of authentic data taken from the British National Corpus, shows that the grammatical category 'proper names' exhibits prototype effects: some members of the category are better members of namehood than others. By making use of these findings, the present paper evaluates the treatment of proper names in English grammar text­books. It concludes that prototype theory, one of the principles of cognitive lin­guistics, can offer greater pedagogical potential when writing English grammar textbooks.