Abstracts

Shweta Akolkar (UC Berkeley)

Title: An unexpected case of indexical shift in Marathi

Abstract: In this talk, I identify Marathi (Indo-Aryan) as a language where indexicals embedded in attitude reports can shift to get their reference from the context of the attitude rather than the utterance. Marathi indexical shift has a number of unusual properties: it is restricted to reports of internal attitudes (i.e. thought, knowledge, and self-directed speech), it enables a first person inclusive (speaker + addressee) indexical to be coreferent with the attitude holder alone, and it results in a clause that is opaque for de re construal. I present an account for each of these properties, building on context-overwriting analyses of indexical shift (Anand & Nevins, 2004, Anand 2006, Deal 2020, a.o.).

David Blunier (Université de Genève)

Title: Split indexicality

Abstract: The theory of indexicality favoured by both semanticists and philosophers (Kaplan, 1989) tells us that indexicals form a natural class - that class of elements in a given language which meaning is a function from context to content. This class typically includes (but is not restricted to) elements such as nominals (I, you), adverbs (here, now) and verbs (come). According to the favorite theory, indexicality is therefore an inherent property of such elements, setting them aside from other elements in the same category; I and you fundamentally differ from their 3rd person counterparts. However, comparative research in morphosemantics tells us that pronouns are not atomic elements, but complex entities built from primitive features such as person, gender and number. Looking at two empirical phenomena - indexical shift and logophoric pronouns - I will challenge the favorite theory and argue that indexicality is best understood if thought of as a feature that can, but doesn't need to, attach to first and second person elements across languages, allowing for languages to make use of strictly non-indexical first and second personal pronouns. This redefinition has important consequences for our understanding of pronouns cross-linguistically, but also for our semantic theorising about context dependence in general.

Isabelle Charnavel (Université de Genève)

Title : Free Indirect Discourse as logophoric context

Abstract : In this talk, I will argue for a logophoric analysis of Free Indirect Discourse (FID). FID is descriptively a hybrid between Direct Discourse (DD) and Indirect Discourse (ID). Recent studies largely agree on a DD-based analysis of FID by relying on bicontextual dependency (Schlenker 2004, Eckardt 2014, i.a.) or mixed quotation (Maier 2015, i.a.). Instead, I will defend an ID-based, logophoric analysis of FID on the basis of overlooked properties of FID such as (anti)licensing of (anti)logophoric elements and recursive embedding of FID, which strengthen some previously discussed arguments such as de se and de te readings or sequence of tense phenomena (Sharvit 2008); the new observation that time and location adverbials are in fact not systematically indexicals anchored to the protagonist (but can be anaphoric or anchored to the speaker) further supports ID-based against DD-based analyses. The hypothesis that FID is outscoped by a logophoric operator not only derives the mixed properties of FID, but also treats FID as a case of an independently motivated linguistic class – the class of logophoric contexts.

Amy Rose Deal (UC  Berkeley)

Title: Pseudo-de re, generalized

Becky Jarvis (UC Berkeley)

Title:  Obviation in Atchan and the semantic typology of long-distance obligatory binding

Abstract: This talk centers on the semantics of a pronominal distinction in Atchan (Kwa, Côte d’Ivoire) as a window into the mechanism and semantic typology of obligatory binding constraints. I first present a case study of pronominal reference in Atchan and argue (a) in support of disjointness features in the semantics of certain pronouns, and (b) in support of a fundamentally semantic view on which long-distance obligatory binding arises from a system of distinguished variables [rather than syntactic licensing constraints]. From here, I suggest that the view I develop for Atchan extends in a natural way to include other instances of long-distance obligatorily-bound pronouns, including Algonquian proximate pronouns, logophoric pronouns, and so-called ‘anti-logophoric’ pronouns.

Emar Maier (University of Groeningen)

Title: Dream Discourse

Abstract: When we recount our dreams we may prefix an intensional operator like `I dreamt that'. Semanticists have spent some time exploring subtle readings of pronouns under such operators, explaining them within the familiar framework of clausal embedding syntax with possible worlds operator semantics. But verbally reconstructing a dream is often more like telling a full-fledged story, with a potentially complex discourse structure (involving propositional discourse units connected by coherence relations like Narration, Background, Elaboration, etc) that is hard to fit inside a single syntactically embedded that-clause. I show how we may analyze actual dream report stories using a formal discourse semantics framework (viz. SDRT with a non-veridical Attribution relation). I then show that this discourse approach naturally extends to visual dream reporting, like in movies and comics, without assuming hidden intensional operators at the visual syntax/semantics interface.

Tatiana Nikitina (LACITO, CNRS)

Title: Direct quotation in a comparative perspective: What a multilingual corpus tells us

Abstract: Direct speech is commonly assumed to be a typological universal, defined in terms of faithful, or verbatim, reproduction of an original utterance. In practice, however, the notion of verbatim does not apply in the same way across languages, cultures, and genres. For example, speech in a foreign language may be translated when reported in some situations but not others, and characteristic dialectal and stylistic features may be introduced or omitted depending on generic conventions or the narrator’s goals. To assess the scope of cross-linguistic variability, I attempt to survey non-verbatim elements attested in otherwise canonical direct speech, based on data from a multilingual corpus specifically annotated for reported speech. I propose a tentative crude typology of such elements and discuss some of the issues it raises for the analysis of direct quotation in European languages.

François Recanati (Collège de France)

Title: Dynamic modes of presentation

Abstract: I propose a couple of revisions to the standard criterion of difference for modes of presentation attributed to Frege. First, we need to broaden the scope of the criterion so that not merely the thoughts of a given subject at a given time may or may not involve the same perspective on some object, but also the thoughts of a subject at different times. Second, we need to ‘relativize’ the criterion of difference to particular subjects in particular situations. Thanks to these revisions, we can make sense of Evans’ notion of a dynamic mode of presentation that persists through time despite lower-level changes of perspective. I show how this idea can be cashed out in the mental file framework.

Merel Semeijn (Institut Jean Nicod)

Title: Common ground beyond the grave

Abstract: As recently described by Geurts, the study of the notion of ‘common ground’ in pragmatics takes face-to-face conversations as a model for communication. In face-to-face settings, interlocutors typically update their propositional attitudes (more or less) simultaneously. Likewise, formal characterizations of common ground on offer, (e.g., in terms of common belief, acceptance or commitment) typically assume simultaneous attitudes. However, the concept of common ground has, without much hesitation, been extended to asynchronous non-face-to-face conversations in which speaker and addressee do not have simultaneous attitudes. Consider, for instance, a ‘letter from beyond the grave’. By the time that the addressee has formed any beliefs based on this letter, the writer has already passed away!

I suggest that insights from multi-agent systems logics (especially Halpern and Moses’s notion of ‘eventual common knowledge’) may aid philosophers of language in developing a notion of ‘eventual common ground’ between interlocutors that applies to such asynchronous conversations. I propose a shift from defining what is common ground at a certain time between agents, to defining what is common ground between agents at certain times.

Andreas Stokke (University of Uppsala)

Title: Quotative Be Like

Abstract: This paper examines a form of talking about speech acts, mental states, and other features so far unexplored in philosophy: quotative be like.  Quotative be like is the use of like and to be that occurs in constructions such as "Ellen was like "I'm leaving!"" We show that quotative be like is not reducible to more familiar forms of direct or indirect discourse. Instead, we argue for an account on which the quoted material in quotative be like picks out properties.