Cross-world reference

Abstract

One way for semanticists to analyze truth in fiction is by relativizing propositions to fictional worlds. However, some sentences in natural language refer to individuals, events, or states from multiple worlds. These include referential cross-world sentences, where the name of an actor from the real world appears to replace the name of the fictional character they play (downward), or vice versa (upward). The conventional analysis claims that in these cases, the name of the actor refers to the fictional individual, or vice versa. I present several empirical asymmetries between upward and downward cross-world reference that make this analysis problematic. Instead, I propose a covert operator FICT, which takes a predicate P, and returns a predicate that roughly means ‘plays a character of whom P is true in a fictional world.’ FICT can be applied to sentential predicates to form downward referential cross-world sentences, or within DPs to form upward referential cross-world sentences. In addition, this accounts for apparent differences between English and languages like Italian and Russian in how gender is handled in referential cross-world sentences, as well as for some previously studied facts about dream reports, which I analyze as a type of referential cross-world sentence. Finally, I explore how this analysis might be expanded to include account for facts about the treatment of fictional times and events.