Propositional Attitude Verbs Research Articles

Generality, genericity and subjective predicates: What propositional attitude verbs, alien viruses, and COVID can tell us

In uttering a subjective opinion like Donuts are tasty, is a speaker expressing her own opinion or also making a generalization about people-in-general? While researchers largely agree that generic readings of subjective predicates exist, there is no consensus on how central genericity is for theories of subjective meaning. We report a psycholinguistic study that tests what influences the level of prevalence that comprehenders attribute to opinions, expressed with subjective predicates, about unfamiliar information. Specifically, if you overhear an alien expressing an opinion about an unfamiliar virus (e.g. The zorgavirus is dangerous), how many other aliens do you think share this alien's opinion? We find that the perceived generalizability of subjective predicates is modulated by the presence/absence of embedding under propositional attitude verbs (whether the speaker is explicitly mentioned with I think/consider) and by participants' extra-linguistic attitudes, namely their anxiety levels about COVID. This work uncovers a new link between subjective predicates and humans’ egocentric cognitive biases.

Extraposition in River Plate Spanish. A case of clausal doubling?

This paper explores a set of constructions from River Plate Spanish in which propositional attitude verbs occur both with a third person feminine accusative clitic and a CP in final position (e.g., No me la esperaba que hiciera tanto frío, ‘I didn’t expect it to be so cold’). The data under analysis, which resemble the well-studied phenomenon of extraposition in English (Jespersen 1933, Postal & Pullum 1988, Rosenbaum 1967, Rothstein 1995, 2004, etc.), have not so far received much attention in the study of Spanish syntax. Our conclusion is that the ‘extraposed’ CPs do not constitute cases of right dislocation or right-adjunction but clear instances of clausal doubling, analogous to the well-known process of clitic doubling with accusative DPs characteristic of Argentine Spanish (e.g., Lo vi a Gonzalo, ‘I saw Gonzalo’). Along the lines of Rothstein (1995, 2004), we argue that the mechanism for licensing the CP is predication and we provide evidence against the hypothesis that the clitic is an object expletive.

Modalidade epistémica e persistência

Adding bem (lit. ‘well’) to a modalized proposition, as in it is quite possible that he already left, increases the degree of conviction being conveyed. Apparently, this epistemic reinforcement that results from the presence of bem corresponds to the expression of a higher degree of belief than what is expressed without bem. Concretely, while é possível que p (‘it is possible that p’) indicates that p is a possibility, é bem possível que p (‘it is quite possible that p’) will indicate that p is a good possibility. If so, the meaning of constructions resulting from the addition of bem to a modalized proposition can be captured within the framework of modality analysis in Krazter (1991, a.o.), who considers different degrees of modality, including the notions of possibility and good possibility. This way, it will be understandable why bem can co-occur with weak modals, as the equivalents of possible or may, but not with strong modals, such as the equivalents of must or have to, since the latter already have a strong value, not being able to be reinforced by the addition of bem. However, there are counter-arguments to this hypothesis, which, among other problems, does not explain why bem may co-occur with various types of modal operators or propositional attitude verbs that express a strong epistemic value, such as, e.g., certo (‘right’), as in é bem certo! (‘quite right!’), or to know, as in the equivalent of he knows well that he is late. Thus, two questions arise: (i) how to explain the epistemic reinforcement resulting from the addition of bem to a sentence with an epistemic modal operator? (ii) why can bem combine with some epistemic modal operators, but not with all of them?An alternative hypothesis is presented and explored, according to which bem does not contribute to the truth conditions of the sentence, but functions at the discursive level. Specifically, the proposed hypothesis is that the addition of bem to a modalized proposition indicates the expectation that this proposition will remain valid as discourse flows. That is, bemhas the function of making the proposition in which it occurs persistent. Thus, the meaning of the constructions resulting from the addition of bem to a modalized sentence is best captured by an analysis of modality within dynamic semantics. In dynamic semantics, the meaning of a sentence is its Context Change Potential, its capability to update the information of the context (or information state) relative to which it is asserted. The proposed analysis provides an answer the two aforementioned questions. Epistemic reinforcement conveyed by bem corresponds to expressing the expectation that the modalized proposition will remain valid as discourse flows. The reason why bem can co-occur with some, but not all, epistemic operators is linked to the type of epistemic state described by each sentence. As predicted by the proposed hypothesis, bem cannot co-occur with modal operators expressing an inference that arises from particular information and that may not be maintained as new information is gathered.

Prior's puzzle generalized

AbstractPrior's puzzle is standardly taken to be the puzzle of why, given the assumption thatthat‐clauses denote propositions, substitution of the proposition that for that within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs is invalid. I show that Prior's puzzle is much more general than is ordinarily supposed. There are two variants on the substitutional form of the puzzle—a quantificational variant and a pronominal variant—and all three forms of the puzzle arise in a wide range of verbal complements, rather than merely in the complements of propositional attitude verbs. The generalized puzzle shows that a range of proposed solutions to the original puzzle fail, or are radically incomplete, and also reveals the connections between Prior's puzzle and debates over the nature of semantic types and higher‐order quantification. I go on to develop a novel, higher‐order solution to the generalized form of the puzzle, and I argue that this higher‐approach is superior to its first‐order alternatives.

Una vía hacía el significado expresivo de los verbos de actitud proposicional

In this paper, I defend a non-descriptivist and non-psychological account regarding the meaning of propositional attitude verbs versus the standard theory of propositional attitudes (and attitude-attributing sentences). My purpose is to avoid some problematic consequences associated with the standard theory, such as a) the postulation of intentional objects; b) the assumption that subject to whom a particular mental state is attributed, using a propositional attitude verb, stands in a first-order relation to such intentional objects; c) the assumption that propositional attitude sentences are used to describe such a relation. My defence will take advantage of classical texts by Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Urmson and will be bolstered, prior characterizing expressivism, with the semantic expressivism developed, in several recent articles, by M.J. Frapolli and N. Villanueva for functions of propositions. In summary, the aim is to show that by employing the notion of functions of propositions, it is possible to explain the expressive meaning of propositional attitude verbs and to avoid a) - c).

Expression of propositional attitudes in conversation by adults with traumatic brain injury: A relevance theoretic approach.

Impairments in social communication are ubiquitous after moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Most attempts to quantify these impairments have been descriptive rather than theoretically motivated. We propose that Relevance Theory provides a framework for characterizing social communication limitations after TBI and linking these problems to underlying cognitive impairments. This study asked how adult speakers with and without TBI used specific linguistic forms in social communication. We selected three linguistic markers that convey thoughts and feelings of the speaker and which are intended to influence the same in the listener: propositional attitude verbs, the discourse marker like and the quotative like. Ten adults with moderate to severe TBI and 12 healthy adults completed 5-min casual conversations with student researcher partners as part of a larger research study. Conversations were transcribed and analysed for the frequency of the three linguistic markers, corrected for total words in the transcript. Participants in the TBI group used discourse marker like significantly less than participants in the healthy comparison group (0.75% and 2.06% of total words, respectively; p = 0.05, d = -0.43) and showed less variety in functions of like. The use of propositional attitude verbs and quotative like was not affected by TBI. Expression of propositional attitude seems largely preserved after TBI. Relevance Theory may provide a helpful framework (1) to interpret subtle quantitative and qualitative differences that contribute to social conversation problems of adults with TBI; and (2) to elucidate relations among the social communication signs and symptoms and underlying cognitive impairments. What this paper adds What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? More awareness and understanding of how social cognition may look in everyday conversations, may help SLPs who treat patients with such difficulties as a result of TBI.

Bouletic modality in Karitiana

Este artigo apresenta um estudo sobre modalidade bulética em Karitiana (Tupi) à luz dos fundamentos teóricos da semântica formal. Assumiremos que modalidade é a categoria do significado relacionada à expressão de possibilidades e necessidades (VON FINTEL, 2006). Há vários tipos de modalidade. A modalidade bulética está relacionada aos desejos/vontades de um indivíduo. Investigaremos as diferentes formas pelas quais a língua Karitiana gramaticaliza a expressão de desejos e vontades. Neste artigo, analisaremos três estruturas que são empregadas para veicular modalidade bulética: (i) o morfema desiderativo -wak; (ii) o verbo pyting; e (iii) o verbo py’eep. Esse artigo é relevante na medida em que é o primeiro trabalho especificamente sobre modalidade bulética em Karitiana. Além disso, algumas características da gramaticalização da modalidade bulética em Karitiana contribuem para o debate teórico em torno da semântica dos verbos que expressam tal modalidade. Comparamos propostas nas quais esses são verbos de atitude proposicional (VON FINTEL e HEIM, 2011; VON FINTEL e IATRIDOU, 2017) com propostas nas quais esses verbos tomam indivíduos (KRATZER, 2006; KRATZER, 2016). As propriedades morfossintáticas dos verbos em Karitiana parecem corroborar a proposta que eles não são proposicionais; no entanto, mostraremos que apenas uma análise proposicional fornece uma semântica adequada para eles.

Frege and saving substitution

Goodman and Lederman (Philos Stud 177(4):947–952, 2020) argue that the traditional Fregean strategy for preserving the validity of Leibniz’s Law of substitution fails when confronted with apparent counterexamples involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs. We argue, on the contrary, that the Fregean strategy succeeds and that Goodman and Lederman’s argument misfires.

Ramsification and the ramifications of Prior's puzzle

AbstractRamsification is a well‐known method of defining theoretical terms that figures centrally in a wide range of debates in metaphysics. Prior's puzzle is the puzzle of why, given the assumption that that‐clauses denote propositions, substitution of “the proposition that ” for “that ” within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs sometimes fails to preserve truth, and at other times fails to preserve grammaticality. On the surface, Ramsification and Prior's puzzle appear to have little to do with each other. But Prior's puzzle is much more general than is ordinarily appreciated, and Ramsification requires a solution to the generalized form of Prior's puzzle. Without such a solution, a wide range of theories will either fail to imply their Ramsey sentences, or have Ramsey sentences that are ill‐formed. As a consequence, definitions of theoretical terms given using the Ramsey sentence will be either incorrect or nonsensical. I present a partial solution to the puzzle that requires making use of a neo‐Davidsonian language for scientific theorizing, but the would‐be Ramsifier still faces serious challenges.

The multiple relation theory and Schiffer\u2019s puzzle

Following Russell, philosophers like Moltmann, Jubien, Boër, and Newman analyse ‘John believes that Mary is French’ as ‘R (John, the property of being French, Mary)’, instead of analysing it as ‘R (John, that Mary is French)’. Thus, for these philosophers, instead of relations holding between agents and truth-bearing entities (propositions), propositional attitude verbs, like ‘belief’, express relations holding between agents and the properties and objects our thoughts and speech acts are about. This is also known as the Multiple Relation Theory. In this paper, I will discuss the Multiple Relation Theory primarily in connection with a problem known as Schiffer’s puzzle. Schiffer first presented the puzzle to argue against the so called direct-reference theory of belief reports advocated, among others, by Salmon and Braun. I will argue that, unlike the direct-reference theory of belief reports, the Multiple Relation Theory does not provide a solution to Schiffer’s puzzle. In this connection, I will also discuss a slight modification of the Multiple Relation Theory according to which the ways the properties and objects our thoughts and speech acts are about are presented to us are part of the truth-conditions of sentences like ‘John believes that Mary is French’. We will see that prima facie such a contextualist version of the Multiple Relation Theory provides a solution to Schiffer’s puzzle. However, concluding, I will argue with new Schiffer cases that, ultimately, also a contextualist version of the Multiple Relation Theory cannot explain all instances of Schiffer’s puzzle. This will undermine the Multiple Relation Theory in general.

Manner implicatures and how to spot them

Abstract The goal of this paper is to help develop a general picture of conversational implicature (Grice, 1975) by looking beyond scalar implicature to see how the phenomenon behaves in a general sense. I focus on non-scalar Quantity implicatures and Manner implicatures. I review canonical examples of Manner implicature, as well as a more recent, productive one involving gradable adjective antonym pairs (Rett, 2015). Based on these data, I argue that Manner implicatures—and conversational implicatures generally—are distinguishable primarily by their calculability; their reinforceability; their discourse sensitivity (to the Question Under Discussion; Roberts, 1990; van Kuppevelt, 1995; Simons et al., 2011); and their embeddability (under negation, propositional attitude verbs, quantifiers, etc.). I use these data to draw conclusions about the usefulness of implicature-specific operators and about ways to compositionally represent conversational implicatures.

Philosophy and Linguistics

This paper is an overview of the contemporary discussions in interdisciplinary studies of meaning of natural language expressions. The paper discusses the latest work published in two interdisciplinary journals «Linguistics and Philosophy» and «Natural Language Semantics» most relevant for philosophy of language. The paper focuses on two general topics: the semantics of singular terms (proper names, pronouns, demonstratives) and the semantics of belief-reports. The paper discusses the recent proposal about the interpretation of pronouns by [Stojnic et al., 2019] according to which such interpretation is strictly determined by the linguistic rules and does not depend on the context. According to this proposal, the referent of a pronoun is determined by a specific coherence relationship the sentence it occurs in has to the previous sentence in a discourse unless it is preceded by a pointing gesture. The paper discuses some issues with this proposal. Specifically, it discusses its difficulties with explaining the cases where the referent of a pronoun stands out in a context and, thus, no pointing gesture or previous discourse is required for the referent identification. It also discusses cases where a coherence relationship (such as Narration) between two sentences allows flexibility with respect to the referent identification and points at pragmatic factors that can be relevant in this respect. The paper also presents some other recent research on proper names, demonstratives and pronouns both linguistically and philosophically oriented.The paper also presents informally some work on belief-reports in linguistics and discussed its relevance for philosophy of language. It discusses the recent work on restrictions on the types of embeddings of propositional attitude verbs and the general approach that derives those restrictions from the predicted meanings of the relevant sentences, such as [Theiler et al., 2019]. The paper discussed the relevance of this issue to a more general question about the nature of a natural language and the relationship between language and logic.

Тривиальность и грамматическая корректность: современные проблемы интенсиональной семантики

The article is devoted to the study of the semantics of embedded questions (interrogative subordinate clauses), as well as the nature of restrictions on the licensing of declarative and interrogative clauses as complements of propositional attitude verbs. The authors show that this topic goes back to the key aspects of the semantic and cognitive program of G. Frege and is of key importance for the philosophy of language. Using the analytical apparatus of contemporary semantics, the authors investigate this topic on the material of the most recent theoretical works. They show how the semantics of embedded questions contributes to the development of a new perspective on the structure of meaning and the cognitive potential of natural language users. The authors also identify a number of theoretical shortcomings and empirical limitations of several theories of the semantics of embedded questions and point at some directions for future research.

Sense, reference and substitution

We show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Frege’s distinction between sense and reference does not reconcile a classical logic of identity with apparent counterexamples to it involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs.

Children's attitude problems: Bootstrapping verb meaning from syntax and pragmatics

How do children learn the meanings of propositional attitude verbs? We argue that children use information contained in both syntactic distribution and pragmatic function to zero in on the appropriate meanings. Specifically, we identify a potentially universal link between semantic subclasses of attitude verbs, their syntactic distribution and the kinds of indirect speech acts they can be used to perform. As a result, children can use the syntax as evidence about the meaning, which in turn constrains the kinds of pragmatic enrichments they do and do not make in understanding these verbs in conversation.

Secondary predication and the distribution of raising to object

In Den Dikken (2017b) arguments are presented for a predicational approach to hyperraising and copy raising constructions in which the ‘raised’ DP serves as the subject of the matrix clause. In this sequel, I show that hyperraising and copy raising also occur in secondary predication constructions embedded under propositional attitude verbs such as consider. An examination of the properties of these hyperraising and copy raising to object constructions leads to the conclusion that overt subject-toobject raising (‘object shift’) definitely exists in English but is obligatory only for subjects of small-clause complements of verbs. Apart from yielding a clearer perspective on the distribution of overt object shift in English, the study also delivers a unified account of a variety of restrictions on the subject of the non-finite complement of propositional attitude verbs.

Conceptualizing Some Verbs of Propositional Attitudes in English

In this article, we discuss the semantics and syntax of Propositional Attitude Verbs. Our goal is to clarify and illustrate how Propositional Attitudes function and behave and put forth the conceptualization/ formalization of sentences containing this type of Verbs. We will see how intentions and beliefs are useful to study Propositional Attitudes. Also, we will argue that the semantic approach is more adequate than the syntactic one in terms of classifying Propositional Attitude Verbs. This, of course, is carried out in the framework of Conceptual Semantics that was mainly introduced by Jackendoff.

Fingimientos y atenuación en el uso de "creo"

The article analyses the development of attenuation functions in different uses of creo in colloquial conversations. This propositional attitude verb, the most polysemic and polyfunctional one in its category, has been traditionally considered an attenuating device because it can be used by speakers to convey distancing from their message. However, the fact that it is a subjectifier in its first person form could be understood as a contradiction with its function being primarily attenuating. This paper explores the semantic and pragmatic values of the different uses of creo in order to determine what triggers attenuation. 215 examples from two conversational corpora, VAL.ES.CO. 2002 and VAL.ES.CO. 2.0, have been analysed. The results suggest that the attenuating function of creo is a consequence of pretending strategies used by the speaker.

Semantic Information and the Syntax of Propositional Attitude Verbs

Propositional attitude verbs, such as think and want, have long held interest for both theoretical linguists and language acquisitionists because their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties display complex interactions that have proven difficult to fully capture from either perspective. This paper explores the granularity with which these verbs' semantic and pragmatic properties are recoverable from their syntactic distributions, using three behavioral experiments aimed at explicitly quantifying the relationship between these two sets of properties. Experiment 1 gathers a measure of 30 propositional attitude verbs' syntactic distributions using an acceptability judgment task. Experiments 2a and 2b gather measures of semantic similarity between those same verbs using a generalized semantic discrimination (triad or "odd man out") task and an ordinal (Likert) scale task, respectively. Two kinds of analyses are conducted on the data from these experiments. The first compares both the acceptability judgments and the semantic similarity judgments to previous classifications derived from the syntax and semantics literature. The second kind compares the acceptability judgments to the semantic similarity judgments directly. Through these comparisons, we show that there is quite fine-grained information about propositional attitude verbs' semantics carried in their syntactic distributions-whether one considers the sorts of discrete qualitative classifications that linguists traditionally work with or the sorts of continuous quantitative classifications that can be derived experimentally.

Definite descriptions and negative existential quantifiers

Previous theorists have claimed that Russell’s theory of definite descriptions gives the wrong truth conditions to sentences in which definite descriptions are embedded under certain other operators; but the other operators used, such as conditionals and propositional attitude verbs, have introduced intensional and hyperintensional complications that might be thought to obscure the point against Russell. This paper shows that the same kind of problem arises when the operator in question (English ‘no’) allows the context to be extensional. It is further argued that presuppositional theories of definite descriptions give intuitively satisfying analyses of the novel data.