Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What distinguishes full-on stating a proposition from merely communicating it? For instance, what distinguishes claiming/asserting/saying that one has never smoked crack cocaine from merely implying/conveying/hinting this? The enormous literature on ‘assertion’ provides many approaches to distinguishing stating from, say, asking and commanding: only the former aims at truth; only the former expresses one’s belief; etc. But this leaves my question unanswered, since in merely communicating a proposition one also aims at truth, expresses a belief, etc.

My aim is not to criticize extant accounts of the state-vs.-merely-convey contrast, but rather to draw on clues from Dummett, functional linguistics and moral …

We introduce a construction which we label 'quasi-factive'. They are heard like factives, in that we immediately take the complement to be true. Yet they aren't really factive at all. Examples include: 'It's not widely known that Marta was born in Canada' (because she was born in Uruguay); 'Don't tell anyone that Carlos will run as a candidate' (because he won't); 'Did it bother Jane that Miguel came?' (no, because Miguel didn't come). We identify sub-categories of our quasi-factives, and then tentatively explore a pragmatic explanation of how they work their magic.