‘She’ ‘s Character

Abstract

When it comes to the interpretation of pronouns or variables, theories of interpretation generally adduce contexts in which these elements feel at home. When pronouns are, thus, accommodated conveniently, they pretty passively do what the contexts tell them to do, which is hardly anything. These elements nevertheless succeed in oiling the wheels of efficient linguistic information exchange. Upon closer inspection, it is hard to say what the meaning of pronouns precisely is. They turn out to have subtle indexical presuppositions but they easily go unnoticed because pronouns so eagerly require these to be satisfied whenever they are there. In this paper we try to uncover the character of pronouns and to identify their lexico-logical needs. We attempt a characterization of their indexical presuppositions in what we call an ‘intentional space’, a concept formulated within a many-sorted modal logic.