Embedded Attitudes

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-406
Author(s):  
Kyle Blumberg ◽  
Ben Holguín
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Modals ◽  
First Person ◽  
Dynamic Effects ◽  
Attitude Reports ◽  
Attitude Verbs ◽  
Present Tense

Abstract This paper presents a puzzle involving embedded attitude reports. We resolve the puzzle by arguing that attitude verbs take restricted readings: in some environments the denotation of attitude verbs can be restricted by a given proposition. For example, when these verbs are embedded in the consequent of a conditional, they can be restricted by the proposition expressed by the conditional’s antecedent. We formulate and motivate two conditions on the availability of verb restrictions: (i) a constraint that ties the content of restrictions to the “dynamic effects” of sentential connectives and (ii) a constraint that limits the availability of restriction effects to present tense verbs with first-person subjects. However, we also present some cases that make trouble for these conditions, and outline some possible ways of modifying the view to account for the recalcitrant data. We conclude with a brief discussion of some of the connections between our semantics for attitude verbs and issues concerning epistemic modals and theories of knowledge.

scholarly journals Acquaintance and first-person attitude reports

Analysis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Ian Schiller
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Attitude Reports

scholarly journals Attitude reports with and without true belief

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deniz Ozyildiz
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Attitude Reports ◽  
Attitude Verbs ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Presupposition Triggers

In Turkish, attitude verbs or embedded clauses cannot be identified as factive presupposition triggers. Yet, the presupposition s observed when certain verbs embed nominalized clauses. I propose to derive the inference globally in the composition, rather than encoding it as a lexical property of certain "triggers."

The Authority of Expressive Self-Ascriptions

Dialogue ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Minh Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Intentional State ◽  
First Person ◽  
Present Tense

ABSTRACTWhat explains first-person authority? What explains the presumption that an utterance is true when it is a sincere intelligible determinate first-person singular simple present-tense ascription of intentional state? According to Rockney Jacobsen, self-ascriptions each enjoy a presumption of truth because they are systematically reliable. They are systematically reliable because they are typically both truth-assessable and expressive. Such self-ascriptions, if sincere, are certain to be true. This article presents a defence and a critique of Jacobsen's theory. It is argued that the purported prevalence of expressive self-ascriptions is at best contingent. This contingency cannot explain why self-ascriptions are necessarily authoritative.

“La marquise sortit à cinq heures”

PMLA ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 84 (6) ◽  
pp. 1644-1648
Author(s):  
Albert Chesneau
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Nouveau Roman ◽  
The Ideal

Simple structural analysis applied to passages cited from the works of André Breton elucidates the reasons for his condemnation of the statement La marquise sortit à cinq heures (see his Manifeste du surréalisme, 1924) as non-poetic. This study demonstrates the opposition existing between the above-mentioned realist sentence, essentially non-subjective (third-person subject), non-actual (past tense predicate), contextual (context can be supposed), and prosaic (lack of imagery), and on the other hand a theoretic surrealist sentence, essentially subjective (first-person subject), actual (present tense predicate), and non-contextual, producing a shock-image. In reality, Breton's surrealistic phrase does not always contain all of these qualities at once. However, in contrast to the condemned phrase which contains none at all, it does always manifest at least one of these characteristics, the most important having reference to the evocative power of the shock-image. A final comparison with a sentence quoted from Robbe-Grillet, the theoretician of the “nouveau roman”, proves that even though it may appear objective, the surrealist phrase is really not so. In conclusion, the four characteristics of the ideal surrealist sentence—subjectivity, actuality, non-contextuality, and ability to produce shock-images—create a poetics of discontinuity opposed to the classical art of narration as found traditionally in the novel. (In French)

scholarly journals Logophoricity and shifts of perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-99
Author(s):  
Tatiana Nikitina
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Intermediate Position ◽  
First Person ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Attitude Reports ◽  
Third Person ◽  
And Shifts

Abstract This study presents a typology of existing approaches to logophoricity and discusses problems the different approaches face. It addresses, in particular, perspective-based accounts describing constructions with logophoric pronouns in terms of their intermediate position on the direct-indirect continuum (Evans 2013), and lexical accounts incorporating the idea of coreference with the reported speaker into the pronoun’s meaning, either through role-to-value mapping mechanisms (Nikitina 2012a, b), or through feature specification (Schlenker 2003a, b). The perspective-based approach is shown to be unsatisfactory when it comes to treating language-specific data in precise and cross-linguistically comparable terms. It fails to account, for example, for cross-linguistic differences in the behavior of logophoric pronouns, for their optionality, and for their close diachronic relationship to third person elements. Lexical accounts are better equipped to handle a variety of outstanding issues, but they, too, need to be revised to accommodate a variety of discourse phenomena associated with logophoricity, including alternation with first person pronouns. The proposed solution follows the lines of lexical approaches but aims at enriching the pronouns’ lexical representation with notions pertaining to narrative structure, such as the role of Narrator. A separate solution is proposed for treating conventionalized uses occurring outside speech and attitude reports.

scholarly journals Negation and Modality

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Hedin
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Speech Situation ◽  
National Corpus

This paper deals with the question of negation and mood in Modern Greek verb complementation where there is a choice between an indicative and a subjunctive complement, in particular those with the verb pistévo (πιστεύω) ‘think, believe’, but also nomízo (νομίζω) ‘think, believe’, kséro (ξέρω) ‘know’, thimáme (θυμάμαι) ‘remember’, vlépo (βλέπω) ‘see’, akúo (ακούω) ‘hear’, and vrísko (βρίσκω) ‘find’. It presents the result of an empirical study of pistévo, based on an investigation undertaken in the Hellenic National Corpus (HNC) of sentential complements following pistévo. The factor of negation in the matrix is investigated along with two other factors, hypothesized to be of interest, namely first person singular of the present tense in the matrix and second person (singular and plural) in the complement. As was expected, neither any of the three factors individually or any combination of the three can be considered decisive for the choice of mood. What seems to be certain, however, is that the combination of all three constitutes a context that favours the subjunctive and in one case actually seems to exclude an indicative complement, namely when the illocutionary force of the utterance is that of a question, more or less rhetorically eliciting feedback. It thus does not seem to be the presence of the negation, nor any other syntactic factor, that actually triggers the subjunctive with this verb in some contexts, but a particular speech situation (where the three investigated factors are typically present). That is, the prerequisite is not syntactic, but pragmatic.

Morphological factors in the grammaticalization of the Catalan “go” past

Diachronica ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Juge
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Present Account ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
First Person Plural

The Catalan periphrastic perfective past is a so-called “go” past: Vaig cantar, lit. “I-go to-sing”, “I sang” vs. Vaig allà, lit. “I-go there”, “I go there”. Its semantic development has been much discussed, but it presents morphological issues as well. Previous analyses ignore key morphological factors, especially the shift from the early mix of preterit and present auxiliary forms to exclusive use of the present and the development of several variant auxiliary forms. The auxiliary-plus-infinitive construction shares some but not all forms with the lexical verb anar “to go”. Early examples use mostly preterit auxiliary forms but later the small number of present forms grows and the preterit forms disappear. I argue that the present-preterit syncretism in the first person plural of anar, anam, allowed for reinterpretation of the construction as one with a present tense auxiliary rather than a preterit auxiliary. This analysis runs counter to the typical ‘narrative present’ account. Subsequently, the unique third person singular va allowed for new auxiliary forms influenced by the synthetic preterit. This case shows the importance for typological study of detailed analysis of this type to counterbalance the risk of superficial analysis inherent in crosslinguistic studies.

scholarly journals To We or Not to We: Corpus-Based Research on First-Person Pronoun Use in Abstracts and Conclusions

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110088
Author(s):  
Shih-ping Wang ◽  
Wen-Ta Tseng ◽  
Robert Johanson
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
First Person ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Integrated Framework ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
Pronoun Use ◽  
Present Tense

A growing trend exists for authors to employ a more informal writing style that uses “we” in academic writing to acknowledge one’s stance and engagement. However, few studies have compared the ways in which the first-person pronoun “we” is used in the abstracts and conclusions of empirical papers. To address this lacuna in the literature, this study conducted a systematic corpus analysis of the use of “we” in the abstracts and conclusions of 400 articles collected from eight leading electrical and electronic (EE) engineering journals. The abstracts and conclusions were extracted to form two subcorpora, and an integrated framework was applied to analyze and seek to explain how we-clusters and we-collocations were employed. Results revealed whether authors’ use of first-person pronouns partially depends on a journal policy. The trend of using “we” showed that a yearly increase occurred in the frequency of “we” in EE journal papers, as well as the existence of three “we-use” types in the article conclusions and abstracts: exclusive, inclusive, and ambiguous. Other possible “we-use” alternatives such as “I” and other personal pronouns were used very rarely—if at all—in either section. These findings also suggest that the present tense was used more in article abstracts, but the present perfect tense was the most preferred tense in article conclusions. Both research and pedagogical implications are proffered and critically discussed.

scholarly journals Truthmaker semantics for natural language: Attitude verbs, modals, and intensional transitive verbs

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 159-200
Author(s):  
Friederike Moltmann
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Object Based ◽  
Attitude Reports ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Language Attitude ◽  
Attitude Verbs ◽  
Truthmaker Semantics ◽  
Further Development

Abstract This paper gives an outline of truthmaker semantics for natural language against the background of standard possible-worlds semantics. It develops a truthmaker semantics for attitude reports and deontic modals based on an ontology of attitudinal and modal objects and on a semantic function of clauses as predicates of such objects. The semantics is applied to factive verbs and response-stance verbs as well as to cases of modal concord. The paper also presents new motivations for ‘object-based truthmaker semantics’ from intensional transitive verbs such as need, look for, own, and buy and gives an outline of their semantics based on a further development of truthmaker semantics.

Expressing i think that in Polish

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-253
Author(s):  
Iwona Kokorniak ◽  
Alicja Jajko-Siwek
Keyword(s):  
Formal Semantic ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
First Person ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Linguistic Usage

Abstract The paper investigates how four Polish mental predicates, signalling the subject’s of conception thinking process and representing the i think that conceptualisation, differ in usage and what motivates the difference. The verbs’ first person singular present tense forms, in an objective way, signal the speaker’s, i.e. the subject’s of conception, thoughts about the (ir)reality stored in their mind, whereas the content of clause complementation subjectively reveals the object of conception, namely the realm of one’s thoughts. A quantitative corpus-driven analysis implemented in the study presents how formal, semantic and extra-linguistic ‘usage features’ of the complementation interact with the verbs. The findings suggest that the i think that conceptualisation shows linguistic variation in Polish dependent on the temporal realm of the situation described in the complementation, the topic of discourse, and the evaluation of the event described.

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