Shifted indexicals in Hong Kong Sign Language with(-out) role shift

Abstract

This study investigates shifted indexicals in Hong Kong Sign Language (hereafter HKSL). In elicited data, shifted indexicals are attested in utterances with and without attitude role shift. The data further show that attitude role shift has both quotation-like and non-quotation-like characteristics, leading to the conclusion that neither of the two major accounts for role shift, the Demonstration Account by Davidson (2015) or the Indexical Shifting Operator Account by Schlenker (2017b, 2017a) suffices to fully explain role shift. Moreover, the interpretations of the indexicals seem to depend on the exact form of the embedding predicate. Crucially, a shifted interpretation is available only under what I notate as VERB -2 but not VERB -3. I propose that VERB -2 can act as neutral agreement that leads to ambiguous interpretations of the sentences.