The presupposition theories about indexicals: a constrative study

• Grant number: 13/22990-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2014
• End date: August 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Renato Miguel Basso
• Grantee: Felipe Manca Dal Ava
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In his work, Demonstratives (1989), David Kaplan says that indexicals and demonstratives always refer directly to individuals, and that an individual is a propositional contribution of an indexical, assuring his referential rigidity. Although, the kaplanian theory have being very influent in the Formal Semantic field, mostly because of its range and elegance, it has suffered some criticism and reviews, both in its empiric scope and its architecture. Kaplan assures indexicals and demonstratives referential rigidity coming up with a specific compositional mechanism for these items that have as consequences, among others, to set in completely distinct categories constructions as ¨the house¨ and ¨this house¨, in a way that only ¨the house¨ can be compositionally understood as DP+NP. Recently, some researches in Linguistics have disagree with Kaplan's theory and they postulate, along the lines of dynamic semantics, presupposition theories for indexicals that (I) preserve the effects of referential rigidity plead by Kaplan, though (II) without postulate specifically mechanisms that the interpretation of indexicals and (III) without offering that exists a split, for example, between demonstrative and definite descriptions, defending that both are composed in DP+NP. The main objective in this scientific initiation project is to understand that a new way to think about indexicals (that, as we know, started in 2006) to (I) contrast with Kaplan's theory and (II) to check its applicability in relation to the Brazilian Portuguese.