索引詞及其語義: 兼談漢語中的 “ 我 ” 和 “ 自己 ”

In his classic paper Demonstratives, Kaplan claims that (i) indexicals are directly referential; (ii) no monster exists. Although his theory is quite influential, it has problems dealing with these four kinds of cases： (a) sloppily bound I under only; (b) first-person de se belief reports; (c) shifted indexicals; (d) the phenomenon of deferred reference. In this paper, through our examination of the recent literature on these aspects, we find that none of these problematic cases is sufficient to refute Kaplan＇s claim on the rigidity of indexicals, though his report semantics does need refining. More specifically, Maier ([20]) have shown that High-Order Unification and relational analysis can save Kaplan＇s rigid I from case (a) and case (b). Besides, given the fact discovered by Anand ＆ Nevins ([1]) that the properties of Shifted Together and No Intervening Binder are satisfied by shifted indexicals in Zazaki, one has good reasons to believe that the problem raised by shifted indexicals is due to Kaplan＇s report semantics, rather than the rigidity of indexicals. Furthermore, it is more convincing of Hunter＇s ([14]) explanation to the data involved in case (d) through the interaction between indexicals and certain operators than Nunberg＇s ([21]) descriptive interpretation of indexicals. In the end, we explore the differences between Chinese wo and ziji from the semantic perspective of indexicals. Our findings are as follows： Chinese wo, just like Enlgish I is an indexical with direct reference; Chinese ziji has distinct uses, though it may denote the speaker when used as sentential free; it is inappropriate to treat long distance zijis as shifted indexicals as proposed by Anand ([3]).