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Introduction

  • Melanie Bervoets
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Part of the Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy book series (SLAP, volume 102)

Abstract

The empirical domain introduced here is a class of verbs whose members can be used to describe reports of opinion regarding future possibilities. Investigating the semantic nature of these “future-directed opining verbs”—including recommend, offer, and promise—involves an examination of several key properties, which also throws into relief what the verbs have in common with both the propositional attitudes and the speech reporting verbs, and where these groups diverge. Among the basic dimensions at play are compatibility with different kinds of subjects and objects, the types of events the verbs can describe, the presence or absence of a requirement for external attestation, and how the verbs combine with a dispositional operator. The future-directed opining verbs also interact with two important phenomena most commonly associated with modal quantifiers and attitudes, respectively, namely free choice disjunction and Neg-raising. Resulting expansions to the set of contexts where each applies set up critical examinations of existing theories, forming the secondary subject matter of this work.

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© Springer Nature B.V. 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  • Melanie Bervoets
    • 1
  1. 1.TorontoCanada

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