Speaker: Filipe Kobayashi (Paris Lodron University of Salzburg)
Title: Syntactic constraints on fake indexicals in relative clauses (joint work with Caroline Gardner, Franziska Keller, Anita Riedl and Susi Wurmbrand)
Time: Thursday, October 23rd, 5pm – 6pm
Location: 32-D769
Abstract: Fake indexicals (i.e., bound occurrences of 1st and 2nd person pronouns) have a much more restricted distribution when they are bound by relative pronouns than when they are directly bound by an indexical pronoun (Kratzer 2009; Charnavel, Meadows and Sportiche 2025). Contra previous claims that the licensing of fake indexicals in these sentences is tied to verbal agreement or subjecthood, we argue for a new generalization: a relative pronoun can bind a fake indexical only if it is the highest argument in its clause. We then propose an account of this generalization grounded on a particular theory of how relative pronouns are able host person features.