Editing Proper noun (section)

==Acquisition and cognition==
There is evidence from brain disorders such as [[aphasia]] that proper names and common names are processed differently by the brain.{{sfn| Robsona|Marshalla|Pringa |Montagua|2004}}

There also appear to be differences in language acquisition.
Although Japanese does not distinguish overtly between common and proper names, two-year-old children learning Japanese distinguished between expressions for categories into which objects fall (common) and expressions referring to individuals (proper). When a previously unknown label was applied to an unfamiliar object, the children assumed that the label designated the class of object, regardless of whether the object was animate or inanimate. But if the object already had an established name, there was a difference between inanimate objects and animals: 
* for inanimate objects, the children tended to interpret the new label as a sub-class, but
* for animals they tended to interpret the label as a name for the individual animal (i.e. a proper name).{{sfn|Imai|Haryu|2001}}

In English, children employ different strategies depending on the type of referent but also rely on syntactic cues, such as the presence or absence of the determiner "the" to differentiate between common and proper nouns when first learned.{{sfn|Katz|Baker|Macnamara|1974}}