Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
Sloppy indexicals are not fake
- Date
- Thursday 30 October 2025
- Time
- Serie
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.07
Abstract
Indexical binding in constructions illustrated in (1)-(2) is one of the crucial empirical arguments questioning the Kaplanian hypothesis that indexicals rigidly depend on context.
(1) Only I did my homework. (i.e., nobody else did their homework) (Heim 1991)
(2) I am the only one around here who will admit that I could be wrong. (i.e., nobody else will admit that they could be wrong) (Partee 1989)
The goal of the talk is to propose an analysis of such cases that maintains contextual dependency as a fundamental property of indexicals. The analysis, which is mainly based on French data, requires re-examining the role of binding, focus, agreement and presuppositions in these constructions.