Specificity, automatic designation and 'I'

This paper studies the context-dependence of the first-person indexical `I,' while attempting to make the identifiabilitycriteria for specificity and Thus, Jrgensen (2000:146) notes that the term has been used to drawatleast four differentdistinctions:(i) whether the speaker believes the referenttobeunique# (ii) whether the speaker knows the identityofthe referent#(iii) whether the speaker wants to express a generalization, and(iv) whether the speaker believes the identityof the referenttobeimportant. It is known that several allegedly sound descriptions of specificitymentioned in the literature fail to be adequate on their own in covering all conditions of the notion. A prolific author contributing to recentliterature on specificity, von Heusinger (2002:2) explicates assorted characterizations of this notion. (See Journal of Pragmatics,vol. 19, no. 3, for a special issue on specificity,guest-edited by him and identifiedby def spec def non-spec indef spec indef non-spec speaker + -- + -- hearer + + -- -- Table1 The `identifiability' criteria for definiteness and specificity(Legend: def definite, spec specific) definiteness clearer for this important indexical. Having been influenced by John Perry's work on indexicals, we'll show that this (seemingly) clearest case of an indexical poses a difficult