Expressing regret and avowing belief
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Jay D. Atlas
Abstract
This essay reconceptualizes the relationship of mental-act, mental-state, and speech-act verbs. It shows that ‘believe’ can be used as a mental-activity, quasi-performative verb and not just a mental-state verb, illustrates the explanatory value of distinguishing performative from quasi-performative verbs, and draws the implications of the new taxonomy of verbs for Moore’s Paradox. Quasi-performative, mental activity verbs can express (manifest) or create mental-states just as performative speech-act forms like ‘I promise’ can create obligations. The arguments employ methods first used by Jerrold Sadock (1974) in his classic work Toward a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts. I adapt his syntactical arguments that appeal to the properties of expositive adverbials in sentences with verbs of communication to the case, which Sadock did not discuss, of the mental-state verb ‘believe’ and show that ‘believe’ has more than mental-state uses; it is also a mental-activity verb that has properties that, following Hunter (1990), I call ‘quasi-performative’. I also use the adverbial for the last time to distinguish ‘believe’ from a performative verb. Likewise I extend Sadock’s arguments for the case of performative communication verbs embedded in factive sentences, e.g. in ‘regret’ sentences, to show that ‘believe’ has performative-like uses. I also employ Sadock’s observations on the relation between stative-verb sentences and related pseudo-cleft sentences to show that ‘believe’ and ‘regret’ have non-stative uses. I discuss the views of Donald Davidson and Zeno Vendler on the difference between mental state-verbs and mental event-verbs. And I conclude with the implications of this new characterization of ‘believe’ for the classic problem of Moore’s Paradox.
Abstract
This essay reconceptualizes the relationship of mental-act, mental-state, and speech-act verbs. It shows that ‘believe’ can be used as a mental-activity, quasi-performative verb and not just a mental-state verb, illustrates the explanatory value of distinguishing performative from quasi-performative verbs, and draws the implications of the new taxonomy of verbs for Moore’s Paradox. Quasi-performative, mental activity verbs can express (manifest) or create mental-states just as performative speech-act forms like ‘I promise’ can create obligations. The arguments employ methods first used by Jerrold Sadock (1974) in his classic work Toward a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts. I adapt his syntactical arguments that appeal to the properties of expositive adverbials in sentences with verbs of communication to the case, which Sadock did not discuss, of the mental-state verb ‘believe’ and show that ‘believe’ has more than mental-state uses; it is also a mental-activity verb that has properties that, following Hunter (1990), I call ‘quasi-performative’. I also use the adverbial for the last time to distinguish ‘believe’ from a performative verb. Likewise I extend Sadock’s arguments for the case of performative communication verbs embedded in factive sentences, e.g. in ‘regret’ sentences, to show that ‘believe’ has performative-like uses. I also employ Sadock’s observations on the relation between stative-verb sentences and related pseudo-cleft sentences to show that ‘believe’ and ‘regret’ have non-stative uses. I discuss the views of Donald Davidson and Zeno Vendler on the difference between mental state-verbs and mental event-verbs. And I conclude with the implications of this new characterization of ‘believe’ for the classic problem of Moore’s Paradox.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
