Copy Raising and De Re Attitudes

Abstract

This paper is mainly concerned with providing a semantic treatment of copy raising constructions (CRCs) and standard raising constructions (SRCs) in English. In the literature, CRCs are licensed only if a perception source for the matrix subject is available. Accepting this, Asudeh and Toivonen (2012) propose a semantic analysis of CRCs by assigning a semantic role like a perception source to the matrix subject of a CRC. However, this paper argues that the perception source is not sufficient for a semantic analysis of CRCs, since it poses a problem when dealing with a case of mistaken identity. This paper also argues that CRCs and SRCs are marked by inferential evidentials - i.e. CRCs are involved in direct evidence, while CRCs direct or indirect evidence. To solve the problem arising in the case of mistaken identity, this paper proposes that the semantics of de re attitudes be incorporated into the semantics of CRCs, together with evidentiality which functions to establish a direct evidential relation to an entity that counts as the res. The semantic difference between CRCs and SRCs is that CRCs requires the relation, while SRCs does not. This indicates that unlike CRCS, SRCs are interpreted in terms of de dicto attitudes.