Indexicals and Compositionality: Inside-Out or Outside-In?

Two different approaches to the compositional semantics of indexicals are compared. The outsidein approach uses λ-abstraction and is heavily lexicalised. The inside-out approach treats indexicals by presupposition resolution. The former is relatively simple to implement and deals in a natural way with multiple occurences of indexicals. The latter is more complex, but has potential to deal with a wider range of indexical phenomena. However, it needs to be constrained in a practical implementation as it over-generates.