Experiments in Linguistic Meaning

The results of an experimental rating study are reported suggesting that self-pointing gestures aligned with a third-person pronoun are acceptable in German indirect discourse (ID) utterances. Following a proposal by Ebert & Hinterwimmer (2022) for self-pointing gestures in free indirect discourse (FID), self-pointing gestures in ID are interpreted as character viewpoint gestures (CVGs) quoted from the matrix subject. Crucially, it is argued that in ID, a perspective shift to the matrix subject can take place. It is proposed that ID is an instance of mixed quotation involving a demonstration (cf. Clark & Gerrig 1990, Davidson 2015) where self-pointing is quoted from the matrix subject's original utterance.