Vortrag: The issue of classifying German ‘früher’

Temporal adverbs are generally classified either as indexicals or as dates (Perry 2013). However, the German adverb ‘früher’ (~ ‘formerly’) poses a problem to traditional classification systems because it fits into neither of the categories. Dates are expressions which refer to specific time intervals and whose reference is context-independent (e.g. ‘on October 5th’). The class of indexicals, on the other hand, requires the utterance context to determine reference and consists of the subcategories of pure indexicals (e.g. ‘tomorrow’, ‘last week’) and true demonstratives, which require a pointing gesture for reference (e.g. ‘back then’) (Kaplan 1989, Perry 1997, 2001). Examples like (1), however, show that German ‘früher’ cannot be put into either category:
(1) Peter war früher Busfahrer.
Peter was formerly bus-driver
‘Peter used to be a bus driver.’
Without further context, the temporal reference in (1) is unspecific, which indicates that ‘früher’ cannot be a date. Yet, it does not seem to be an indexical either: it cannot be used with a pointing gesture like true demonstratives, but its reference is too vague for it to be a pure indexical.
This talk addresses this issue and argues that ‘früher’ indicates that a new category for classifying temporal adverbs is needed.

References
Kaplan, David (1989). “Demonstratives. An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics and Epistemology of Demonstratives and other Indexicals”. In Joseph Almog, John Perry, and Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes from Kaplan, pp. 481–563. New York: Oxford UP.
Perry, John (1997). “Indexicals and Demonstratives”. In Bob Hale & Crispin Wright (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Language, pp. 586–612. Oxford: Blackwell.
Perry, John (2001). Reference and Reflexivity, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Perry, John (2013). “Temporal Indexicals”. In Heather Dyke & Adrian Bardon (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time (pp. 486–506). West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Info

Tag: 17.05.2025
Anfangszeit: 11:50
Dauer: 00:30
Raum: GWZ 2.116
Track: Semantics
Sprache: en

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