Person and binding (A partial survey): 2335
Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: : We provide a partial survey of three approaches to two problems in the semantics of person, which we call the 'Bindability Problem ' and the 'Shiftability Problem'. On the standard (Kaplanian) view of indexical pronouns, the semantic value of I and you is determined by a context rather than by an assignment function [=Separation Thesis], and furthermore this context must be that of the actual speech act [=Fixity Thesis]. The Bindability Problem originates in the observation that indexical pronouns sometimes behave as bound variables, as in Heim's Only I did my homework (... therefore John didn't do his). This problem suggests that the Separation Thesis is too strong. The Shiftability Problem consists in the observation that some indexicals may be evaluated with respect to the context of a reported speech act, so that what is literally John says that I be a hero may mean (in Amharic) that John says that he, John, is a hero. This problem suggests that the Fixity Thesis is too strong. We lay out and compare three approaches to these problems. According to Theory I, pronouns are concealed definite descriptions whose restrictors may include predicates of the form speaker(x, c) or hearer(x, c), which are endowed with (i) an individual variable (which solves the Bindability Problem), and (ii) a context variable (which solves the Shiftability Problem, with the auxiliary assumption that attitude verbs manipulate context variables). According to Theory II, first person pronouns are variables that are always bound, be it by (i) another first person pronoun (which solves for the Bindability Problem), or (ii) an attitude verb (which solves for the Shiftability Problem), or (iii) a (bare) l-operator. Rules of feature percolation account for the appearance of the right morphological features on the pronoun. According to Theory III, a first person pronoun is a variable like
Author: P. Shlenker
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2149572212