Abstract
In this chapter, I explore Bach’s idea (2000) that null appositives, intended as expanded qua-clauses, can resolve the puzzles of belief reports. These puzzles are crucial in understanding the semantics and pragmatics of belief reports. I propose that Bach’s strategy is not only a way of dealing with puzzles, but also an ideal way of dealing with belief reports. I argue that even simple unproblematic cases of belief reports are cases of pragmatic intrusion, involving null appositives, or, to use the words of Bach, ‘qua-clauses’. My contribution in this chapter develops ideas broached by Salmon (1986) but is more linguistically-determined. The main difference between my pragmatic approach and the one by Salmon (1986) is that this author uses the notion of conversational implicature, whereas I use the notion of pragmatic intrusion and explicature. From my point of view, statements such as “John believes that Cicero is clever” and “John believes that Tully is clever” are assigned distinct truth-values. In other words, I claim that belief reports in the default case illuminate the hearer on the mental life of the believer, that includes specific modes of presentation of the referents talked about. Furthermore, while in the other pragmatic approaches, it is mysterious how a mode of presentation is assumed to be the main filter of the believer’s mental life, here I provide an explanatory account in terms of relevance, cognitive effects, and processing efforts. The most important part of the chapter is devoted to showing that null appositives are required, in the case of belief reports, to explain certain anaphoric effects, which would otherwise be mysterious. My examples show that null appositives are not necessitated at logical form, but only at the level of the explicature, in line with the standard assumptions by Carston and Recanati on pragmatic intrusion. I develop a potentially useful analysis of belief reports by exploiting syntactic and semantic considerations on presuppositional clitics in Romance.
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- 1.
I was told that the term ‘pragmatic intrusion’ has negative connotations in the context of a theory in which the meanings of sentences are in general underdetermined. I do not take the view that a language, in order to be perfect, must match logical forms and propositions and thus I do not take intrusion as a sign of imperfection. It is true that that better terminology could be used, e.g. pragmatic inserts; but I am persuaded that the use of novel terminology may confuse readers who are used to books like Levinson (2000) or Carston (2002). So, I hope to be allowed to retain the term ‘intrusion’, imperfect though it may be.
- 2.
This observation was made by a commentator.
- 3.
To deal with this issue exhaustively one needs one further paper.
- 4.
I was told that the choice of NP may ease the comprehension process (thus reducing processing costs) and that reduced effort may increase overall relevance.
- 5.
However, I am not saying that they are unreflective in all cases.
- 6.
Williamson (2006) correctly argues that a better formulation of Leibniz’s law is required. The reader is referred to Asher (2000) and in particular to his identity principle: Suppose that φ is an expression denoting an abstract entity, that φ contains an occurrence of a name α, and that the denotation of α is the same as the denotation of β, then the denotation of (φ) = denotation (φ [β/α]). Something along these lines is required.
- 7.
See my last chapter in this book on this problem.
- 8.
I am not arguing that the inferences in question are the result of default rules, but only that they standardly get through.
- 9.
In this respect, my view is different from Salmon’s.
- 10.
My example is reminiscent of an example by Stanley and Williamson (2001), who actually use a case of amnesia to exemplify de se interpretations.
- 11.
For example,
(48) Giovanni lo sa che Maria è a Parigi
((lit.) John it knows that Mary is in Paris).
- 12.
I am adopting this analysis from Carnie (2002).
- 13.
This case seems to strongly support the idea that explicatures of belief reports are not cancellable.
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Capone, A. (2016). Belief Reports and Pragmatic Intrusion(The Case of Null Appositives). In: The Pragmatics of Indirect Reports . Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41078-4_9
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