''Look who is talking!'' Perspective Shift in Natural Language

The meaning of sentences in natural languages is affected by the context in which they are uttered. In this talk I explore some aspects of this context-dependency. I show that in certain cases interpretation needs to be relative to not only one but at least two contexts simultaneously. I discuss various types of so-called perspective shifts that make such double context-dependency necessary.

Marta Abrusan is a permanent research scientist (chargé de recherche) at the CNRS, working at the Institut Jean Nicod, ENS, Paris.