Schlenker, Philippe. 2004. "Context of Thought and Context of
Utterance (A Note on Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical
Present)"(not
the final version; the final version appeared in Mind &
Language 19:3, June 2004, pp. 279–304.)
[Full
paper in pdf]
Abstract: Based on the analysis of narrations
in Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present, we argue
(building in particular on Banfield 1982 and Doron 1991) that the
grammatical
notion of context of speech should be ramified into a Context of
Thought
and a Context of Utterance. Tense and person depend on the Context of
Utterance, while all other indexicals (including here, now and the
demonstratives) are evaluated with respect to the Context of Thought.
Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present are analyzed as
special combinatorial possibilities that arise when the two contexts
are distinct, and exactly one of them is presented as identical to the
physical point at which the sentence
is articulated.