Protagonist-Mediated Perspective

Abstract

There are two main competing analyses of Free Indirect Discourse: bicontextual accounts, which posit two separate context parameters (Schlenker, 2004; Eckardt, 2014; Reboul et al., 2016), and quotation accounts (Maier, 2015, 2016, 2017b). In this paper, we show that the bicontextual approach is not powerful enough to explain the range of perspective-taking behavior in Free Indirect Discourse. We highlight overlooked data on how grammatically perspectival expressions like 'come' are interpreted in Free Indirect Discourse, showing that these perspectival expressions can be anchored to any perspective that is accessible to the protagonist. To account for this data, the bicontextual account requires a significant enrichment: two separate assignment functions in addition to two context parameters. Formalizing quotation using a 'store update model', we argue that modifying the bicontextual account in this way makes the two competing accounts strikingly similar to each other.