Alice says 'I am tired' and Bob says 'I am tired.' According to Kaplan's theory, which of the following correctly describes the two utterances?
AThe character of 'I' differs between the two utterances, producing different meanings
BThe character of 'I' is the same in both utterances, but the content (referent) differs
CBoth character and content are identical; the difference is purely pragmatic, not semantic
DThe content is the same but the character shifts because each speaker brings a different context
Kaplan distinguishes character (the stable rule: 'the speaker of the context') from content (the actual referent in a given context). Character is constant — 'I' always refers to the speaker by the same rule. Content varies: Alice's 'I' picks out Alice, Bob's picks out Bob. Option A reverses the distinction; option C collapses both levels into one; option D gets the direction of variation backwards.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
The sentence 'I am here now' is uttered in a coherent context. What is its truth value at that context of utterance?
AContingently true — it happens to be true whenever someone utters it sincerely
BContingently false — speakers are sometimes not at their reported location
CNecessarily true in any coherent context of utterance
'I' picks out the speaker, 'here' picks out the speaker's location, 'now' picks out the time of utterance. By definition of what it is to be the speaker of an utterance, the speaker is at their location at the time of utterance. So the sentence cannot be false in any coherent context — it is trivially true whenever uttered. This explains its near-tautological feel despite its apparent informativeness.
Question 3 True / False
Kaplan's 'character' is the aspect of an indexical's meaning that varies from context to context — it is what makes indexicals context-sensitive.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
This reverses the two-level distinction. Character is constant — it is the stable rule that does not change across contexts ('the speaker of the context' for 'I'). Content is what varies: the actual referent generated by applying the character to a particular context. Character enables systematic context-sensitivity precisely by being a fixed rule; content is the context-dependent output of that rule.
Question 4 True / False
In Stalnaker's framework, a successful assertion shrinks the context set by eliminating possible worlds incompatible with the asserted content.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
The context set is the set of possible worlds still compatible with everything established in the discourse. When a speaker asserts a proposition (and the hearer accepts it), the worlds where that proposition is false are eliminated — the context set shrinks. This dynamic view explains why what you can felicitously say at point B depends on what was said at point A: discourse progressively updates the context, and earlier utterances constrain what counts as informative or appropriate later.
Question 5 Short Answer
Why does Kaplan need two levels of meaning — character and content — for indexicals? What problem would a single-level analysis fail to solve?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: A single-level analysis faces a dilemma: either assign 'I' a different semantic entry for every speaker (making it infinitely ambiguous) or assign it a context-independent referent (missing the whole point of indexicality). Character solves this by providing one stable rule — 'the speaker of the context' — that generates different contents in different contexts. The character of 'I' is a single meaning shared across all utterances; it is the content that varies. This preserves compositional systematicity (one lexical entry, one semantic rule) while fully accounting for context-sensitivity.
The two-level architecture is Kaplan's main contribution: it shows how expressions can be genuinely context-dependent without being ambiguous. Character is the linguistic meaning; content is the contextual value. This distinction extends naturally to tense ('now'), location ('here'), and demonstratives ('this'), giving formal pragmatics a unified framework for context-dependence.