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- Title
Speaking, telling and assertion: Interrogatives and mood in English.
- Authors
Davies, Eirian
- Abstract
This paper distinguishes between speaking, telling and assertion. Speaking is approached in ‘mechanical’ terms, as the production of linguistic forms. Telling is defined in terms of the degree of the speaker’s commitment to what s/he says, and, therefore, as operative both with respect to constructions of knowledge and of decision. That is, telling is said to apply to constructions both in the indicative and imperative moods, to those with ‘wish’ as well as those with ‘thought’ subjunctives, and to both those with epistemic, and those with deontic, modal verbs. Assertion is defined as full telling of full knowledge. This definition leads to the establishment of three broad categories of non-assertive constructions, which are nevertheless ‘told’. Four telling operators are proposed, defined in terms of degrees of commitment. The discussion builds on an earlier analysis of knowledge constructions in terms of propositional attitudes, by applying telling operators to four of the categories established there. From this it emerges that an account of knowledge constructions in terms of epistemic operators alone cannot be adequate, since telling operators sometimes act to modify epistemic modalities.
- Subjects
INTERROGATIVE (Grammar); ENGLISH language -- Mood; LINGUISTIC analysis; MODALITY (Theory of knowledge); EPISTEMICS; ASSERTION (Linguistics)
- Publication
Functions of Language, 2006, Vol 13, Issue 2, p151
- ISSN
0929-998X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1075/fol.13.2.06dav