Christopher Potts. 2004. The dimensions of quotation. To appear in Chris Barker and Pauline Jacobson, eds., Proceedings of the Workshop on Direct Compositionality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Natural languages are rich in words and constructions for talking about natural language: property-denoting expressions like alliterative, sentences like Ed’s answer was “yes”, and a range of devices for reporting quotations and objecting to speakers’ words and pronunciations. This paper provides a grammar for this domain of natural language. The grammar meets all the technical and intuitive requirements for being directly compositional.