Schlenker, Philippe. 2003. "A Plea for Monsters" (not the final
version; the final version appeared in Linguistics & Philosophy
26: 29-120. 2003)
[Full
paper in pdf]
Abstract: Kaplan claims in Demonstratives that no operator
may manipulate the context of evaluation of natural language indexicals.
We show that this is not so. In fact, attitude reports always
manipulate a context parameter (or, rather, a context variable). This
is shown by (i) the existence of De Se readings of attitude reports
in English (which Kaplan has no account for), and (ii) the existence
of a variety of indexicals across languages whose point of evaluation can
be shifted, but only in attitude reports. We develop an alternative account
within an extensional framework with overt quantification over times,
worlds and contexts. Various typological facts are discussed, esp. the
distinction between English, Amharic and Ewe pronouns, and that
between English and Russian tenses.