Referential Opacity in Propositional Attitudes

Abstract

This paper has attempted to show how referential opacity is licensed within the system of the mental spaces approach. Our analysis is motivated by the fact that we can capture referential opacity in Korean in terms of mental spaces and links between them within the mental spaces approach. One major point of propositional attitudes in Korean is that the embedded subject position with past tense induces only a de re reading, despite the well-known generalization that propositional attitudes are referentially opaque. We take this fact as support for the assumption that subject positions in the complement of propositional attitude verbs in Korean are transparent. Most importantly, we have discussed the cases of referential opacity in Korean propositional attitude sentences and proposed that they fall within the system of the mental spaces approach. No special devices are needed to account for referential opacity in Korean propositional attitude sentences. An interesting point with regard to a de re reading within the system of the mental spaces approach is that there is a referential link between the reality space (R) and the belief space (B). With respect to a de dicto reading, on the other hand, it is important to note that there is no referential link between the reality space (R) and the belief space (B). Finally, we have proposed in this paper that in Korean propositional attitude sentences pronouns induce interpretations that are looser than reflexives and pro yields interpretations that are looser than pronouns.