Ways of asserting. English assertive nouns between linguistics and the philosophy of language

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between illocutions and the lexicon, in particular, illocutions and illocutionary nouns in their function of shell nouns. Theoretical insights from cognitive linguistics, supplemented by an empirical–conceptual approach to verbal communication, are used as a frame of reference. They share the idea that, though conceptualization does not lend itself to direct observation, it can be studied indirectly via language as there is a close relationship between linguistic and conceptual structure. In this vein, the semantics–pragmatics of illocutionary shell nouns is relevant to an understanding of illocutions and their categorization.This study singles out one type of illocutionary noun: assertive nouns, i.e. nouns that name assertive speech acts (e.g., assertion, allegation, argument, claim, etc.), and presents a corpus-based study of them. It approaches assertive nouns by analyzing their behavioral profile, i.e. the complementation patterns they occur with, as they emerge in their occurrence in reporting or denoting and, in so doing, in characterizing specific discourse situation speakers’ utterance acts as acts of F-ing.The methodology used involves descriptive as well as exploratory statistics. As for descriptive statistics, reliance scores are calculated and a chi-square test added. As for exploratory statistics, a hierarchical cluster analysis is applied to the data. Results show that (i) constructional possibilities are part of the semantic–pragmatic meaning of the noun, and (ii) there is a correlation between semantic–pragmatic similarity and distributional similarity. At the same time they lend argument from linguistic patterns to what philosophy states about the commitment to belief, truth, and knowledge that define assertive speech acts, thus showing the potential that descriptive English research has for application across disciplinary boundaries.