Being me, being you: Pronoun puzzles in modal contexts

Abstract

In this paper I investigate the interpretation of pronouns in modal contexts. I focus on dream reports, taking Lakoff’s (1972) Brigitte Bardot examples as a starting point. I show that different pronouns behave differently in this context, and propose an analysis that makes use of Percus and Sauerland’s (2003) LF proposal, but is restricted to first person pronouns. I also show that to capture the full range of data, we need put restrictions on the counterpart relations available to individuals in a given context.