A Semantic Investigation into Indexicals --- With a Special Reference to Chinese

Indexicals are linguistic expressions (such as I, here, now, today, he, she, and that) which have their reference shifting from context to context. For instance, when you use the word 'I', it designates you; when I use the same word, it designates me. As we have seen, indexicals reflect the economy and flexibility of human language, and consequently require one’s higher cognitive capability to grasp their meaning.In this project, we will pursue the meaning of indexicals. In his classic paper on Demonstratives, Kaplan claims that indexicals are directly referential: when an indexical is used in a context, it picks out its referent directly, without the mediation of any propositional component as in the Fregean sense. Kaplan takes this to imply that the referent of an indexical is fixed by the actual context of use, and cannot be affected by logical operators. However, this view is challenged by four kinds of cases: (a) sloppily bound 'I' under 'only'; (b) first-person 'de se' belief reports; (c) shifted indexicals; and (d) the phenomenon of deferred reference. After examining these problematic cases, this project argues that indexicals are indeed directly referential, but their interactions with attitude verbs, modal operators as well as quantifiers are far more complicated than that suggested by Kaplan’s analysis. After an intensive study of these interactions, we will extend our analysis to the study of Chinese reflexive pronoun 'ziji'. 'Ziji' behaves in a distinct way from other pronouns. It can be used as an indexical, an anaphor and/or a bound variable. Given the fact that there is no appealing interpretation of it yet, we will conduct a comprehensive study from the semantic perspective based on the comparison between 'ziji' and first person indexical 'wo' (I) in Chinese. Finally, we will unify indexicals, anaphors and bound variables in the framework of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) to achieve the interpretation of pronominal expressions in a single framework.The present research contributes to the general theory of meaning. It will further benefit the relevant theoretical research such as the nature of belief, self-knowledge, first-person perspective and consciousness. The outcomes generated will improve people's understanding of expressions containing indexicals, and consequently help explain how the communication between groups of people comes true and what the cognitive process and mechanism are like when people learn and use language.