Free indirect discourse as logophoric context

This article argues for a logophoric analysis of Free Indirect Discourse (FID). FID is descriptively a hybrid between Direct Discourse (DD) and Indirect Discourse (ID). Recent studies largely agree on a DD-based analysis of FID by relying on bicontextual dependency (Schlenker in Mind Lang 19:279-304, 2004, Eckardt, The semantics of free indirect discourse: How texts allow us to mind-read and eavesdrop, Brill, Wiley, Leiden, 2014, i.a.) or mixed quotation (Maier in Mind Lang 30:345-373, 2015, i.a.). Instead, the article defends an ID-based, logophoric analysis of FID on the basis of overlooked properties of FID such as (anti)licensing of (anti)logophoric elements and recursive embedding of FID, which strengthen some previously discussed arguments such as de se and de te readings or sequence of tense phenomena (see Sharvit in Linguist Philos 31:353-395, 2008); the new observation that time and location adverbials are in fact not systematically indexicals anchored to the protagonist (but can be anaphoric or anchored to the speaker) further supports ID-based against DD-based analyses. The hypothesis that FID is outscoped by a logophoric operator not only derives the mixed properties of FID, but also treats FID as a case of an independently motivated linguistic class-the class of logophoric contexts.