Assertion and truth default

Abstract

I argue that a successful assertion may consist exclusively of adding “Speaker has said that p” to the common ground. Other effects of the assertion, such as the assumption by the hearer that the speaker believes p and the addition of p to the common ground, follow from the truth-bias, a cornerstone of Truth Default Theory (Levine 2019). Empirical support for this view comes from what I call minimal assertions, a type of speech act that has the hallmark of an assertion to the extent that it elicits a commitment to the truth of the statement but does not seem to have any of the additional properties usually attached to an assertion, such as an expectation that the speaker believes or knows p. I show that minimal assertions are made in contexts in which the truth bias is inoperative because it is beside the point. I conclude that minimal assertions provide empirical support for the commitment theory of assertion (Geurts 2019).