Emar Maier

Proper names and indexicals trigger rigid presuppositions

I provide a novel semantic analysis of proper names and indexicals, combining insights from the competing traditions of referentialism, championed by Kripke and Kaplan, and descriptivism, introduced by Frege and Russell, and more recently resurrected by Geurts and Elbourne, among others. From the referentialist tradition, I borrow the proof that names and indexicals are not synonymous to any definite description but pick their referent from the context directly. From the descriptivist tradition, I take the observation that names, and to some extent indexicals, have uses that are best understood by analogy with anaphora and definite descriptions, that is, following Geurts, in terms of presupposition projection. The hybrid analysis that I propose is couched in Layered Discourse Representation Theory. Proper names and indexicals trigger presuppositions in a dedicated layer, which is semantically interpreted as providing a contextual anchor for the interpretation of the other layers. For the proper resolution of DRSs with layered presuppositions, I add two constraints to van der Sandts algorithm. The resulting proposal accounts for both the classic philosophical examples and the new linguistic data, preserving a unified account of the preferred rigid interpretation of both names and indexicals, while leaving room for non-referential readings under contextual pressure.

Layered Discourse Representation Theory

Layered Discourse Representation Theory (LDRT) is a general framework for representing linguistic content. Different types of content (e.g. asserted, presupposed, or implicated information) are separated by putting them on different layers, all of which have a model-theoretic interpretation, although not all layers are interpreted uniformly. It is shown how LDRT solves so-called `binding problems’, which tend to arise whenever different kinds of content are separated too strictly. The power of the framework is further illustrated by showing how various kinds of contextual information may be accommodated.

Language shifts in free indirect discourse

Abstract Free indirect discourse is a way of reporting what a protagonist thinks or says that is distinct from both direct and indirect discourse. In particular, while pronouns and tenses are presented from the narrators perspective, as in indirect discourse, other indexical and expressive elements reflect the protagonists point of view, as in direct discourse. In this paper I discuss a number of literary examples of free indirect discourse in which the narrator slips into the language, dialect or idiolect of the protagonist. I argue that the leading formal semantic analyses of free indirect discourse, which rely on semantic context shifting, fail to account for such language shifts. I then present an alternative account that treats free indirect discourse as a form of mixed quotation.

The pragmatics of attraction: explaining unquotation in direct and free indirect discourse

The quotational theory of free indirect discourse postulates that pronouns and tenses are systematically unquoted. But where does this unquotation come from? Based on cases of apparent unquotation in direct discourse constructions (including data from Kwaza speakers, Catalan signers, and Dutch children), I suggest a general pragmatic answer: unquotation is essentially a way to resolve a conflict that arises between two opposing constraints. On the one hand, the reporter wants to use indexicals that refer directly to the most salient speech act participants and their surroundings (Attraction). On the other hand, the semantics of direct discourse (formalized here in terms of event modification) entails the reproduction of referring expressions from the original utterance being reported (Verbatim). Unquotation (formalized here also in terms of event modification), allows the reporter to avoid potential conflicts between these constraints. Unquotation in free indirect discourse then comes out as a special case, where the salient source of attraction is the story protagonist and her actions, rather than the reporting narrator and his here and now.

Fictional Names in Psychologistic Semantics

Abstract Fictional names pose a difficult puzzle for semantics. How can we maintain that Frodo is a hobbit, while admitting that Frodo does not exist? To dissolve this paradox, I propose a way to formalize the interpretation of fiction as ‘prescriptions to imagine’ (Walton 1990) within a psychologistic semantic framework in the style of Kamp (1990). In the context of an information exchange, the interpretation of an assertion triggers a dynamic update of a belief component in the interpreter’s mental state, while in the context of a fictional narrative, a statement like Frodo is a hobbit triggers an update of an imagination component. In the computation of these updates, proper names – referential, empty, or fictional – are uniformly analyzed as presupposition triggers. The possibility of different attitude components in a single mental state sharing discourse referents and thereby referentially depending on each other ultimately allows us to account for the central paradox of fictional names and related puzzles.

Perspective shift increases processing effort of pronouns: a comparison between direct and indirect speech

This study investigates the processing of deictic pronouns in two types of speech reports, direct speech (Elephant said: “I get the football”) and indirect speech (Elephant said that I get the football). According to Hypothesis 1, pronoun processing in direct speech is more demanding because it requires a perspective shift from the actual to the original speaker. Hypothesis 2 suggests the opposite, based on a previous study that found a positive effect of direct speech on discourse comprehension. In a referent selection task, 116 native speakers of Dutch identified the referents of first-, second- and third-person pronouns in direct and indirect speech. We found higher error rates and longer decision times for pronoun interpretation in direct speech, confirming Hypothesis 1. Furthermore, accuracy depended on the pronoun (most mistakes for he). We discuss how our results can be reconciled with seemingly conflicting evidence that suggests a processing advantage for direct speech.

Referential dependencies between conflicting attitudes

A number of puzzles about propositional attitudes in semantics and philosophy revolve around apparent referential dependencies between different attitudes within a single agent’s mental state. In a series of papers, Hans Kamp (2003… 2015) offers a general framework for describing such interconnected attitude complexes, building on DRT and dynamic semantics. I demonstrate that Kamp’s proposal cannot deal with referential dependencies between semantically conflicting attitudes, such as those in Ninan’s (21) puzzle about de re imagination. To solve the problem I propose to replace Kamp’s treatment of attitudes as context change potentials with a two-dimensional analysis.

A Plea against Monsters

Inspired by Schlenker’s (2003) seminal Plea for Monsters , linguists have been analyzing every occurrence of a shifted indexical by postulating a monstrous operator. The author’s aim in this paper is to show that Kaplan’s (1989) original strategy of explaining apparent shifting in terms of a quotational use/mention distinction offers a much more intuitive, parsimonious and empirically superior analysis of many of these phenomena, including direct–indirect switches in Ancient Greek, role shift in signed languages, free indirect discourse in literary narratives, and mixed quotation.

The Dynamics of Tense under Attitudes --- Anaphoricity and de se Interpretation in the Backward Shifted Past

This paper shows that both anaphoricity and egocentric de se binding play a crucial role in the interpretation of tense in discourse. It uses the English backwards shifted reading of the past tense in a mistaken time scenario to bring out the tension between these two features. We provide a suitable representational framework for the observed clash in the form of an extension of DRT in which updates of the common ground are accompanied by updates of each relevant agents complex attitudinal state.

Japanese Reported Speech: Towards an Account of Perspective Shift as Mixed Quotation

English direct reported speech is easily distinguished from indirect reported speech by, for example, the lack of a complementizer (that), the quotation marks (or the accompanying prosody), and/or verbatim (‘shifted’) pronouns. By contrast, Japanese employs the same complementizer for all reports, does not have a consistent intonational quotation marking, and tends to drop pronouns where possible. Some have argued that this shows no more than that many Japanese reports are ambiguous. They claim that, despite the lack of explicit marking, the underlying distinction is just as hard in Japanese as it is in English. On the basis of a number of ‘mixed’ examples, I claim that the line between direct and indirect is blurred and I propose a unified analysis of speech reporting in which a general mechanism of mixed quotation replaces the classical two-fold distinction.