Abstract

The notion of synonymy has recently been severely criticized, and its replacement by graded, continuous notions of one or another sort urged on general grounds. At the same time, it has usually been assumed both by critics and defenders of the notion, that synonymy and indirect discourse are in the same boat, that analyzing the latter, for instance, requires no more than an acceptable decision on the former while it requires at least that. Defenders of synonymy have thus thought it sufficient to apply their interpretations of this idea to indirect discourse, while opponents have not thought to attack such application save by way of an attack on synonymy.