The Taming of the True

By JLS
--- for the Grice Circle.

It all started when Austin suggested, way back in that Aristotelian Society
talk ('Other Minds'), that 'know' could have a _peformatory_ use. He later
changed that for 'performative' as being _shorter_ (Clue: Austin pronounced
"performatoooory" -- else one is just as short as the other.

a few notes on "I know it will rain, but don't criticise me if it
doesn't, _o-kay_?", too.

I like the way the use of "know" relates future contingents. In a way, a lot of
future-contingent talk also features in Murphy and my discussion of
Stampe's bequeathing example... Let's recapitulate a bit.

The idea is to analyse "know" in contexts such as initially Grice in
'Common Sense and Scepticism' (_Studies_, p.

(1) I know that there is cheese on the table.

People (e.g. Murphy) have stressed Austin's characterisation of "know" in utterances like (1) as involving a 'performatory' (as I think Austin then called it)
_usage_ (for I'm inclined to see the performative/constative thing as
applying to usages rather than utterances per se).

Austin does this by stressing the parallel between some usages of "know"
and some usages of "promise". This, it seems, is best analysed in this
essay by J. Harrison, 'Knowing and promising', repr. in A. P. Griffiths,
_Belief and Knowledge_, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, ed. GJ Warnock.

Now come the Flat-Earthers, who, in Mediaeval times,

(2) In the Middle Ages, people knew that the earth was flat.

Notably, (2) is _not_ a performatory (or performative) use of "know", for,
for once, it's in the past tense, but the idea is: Tapper thinks that (2)
is probably a good thing to say, for, surely, people in the Middle Ages
_were_ justified in thinking that the earth is flat. (Aren't we all?) (Who
likes to live on a Sphere?).

People (e.g. Tapper) have described

(3) I know that the earth is flat.

as a _successful_ thing to say (in the mediaeval circumstances). Never mind
a true (or false) thing to say. And so, question of truth gets in.

I think we should distinguish _two_ different truth claims in a sentence
of the form:

(4) Grice knows that there is cheese on the table.

The first claim is about whether Grice's actually _knows_ that, i.e. if he
is justified in believing that there is cheese on the table (on the
assumption that there is cheese on the table). A different truth claim
concerns the very truth of the whether there _is_ cheese on the table.

If we stick to what Austin calls the explicit performative formula, we
then have -- and assuming "know" _is_ a bit like a performative verb:

(5) I V that p.

But I claim that "know" is _not_ a performative verb. But never mind
that, we can still investigate the truth claims involved.

I think it _is_ a bit of a category
mistake to say that it's an _act_ (a speech act) which gets truth valued. I
think it is, to echo Alonzo Church, a "proposition" which is Truth Valued.
But never mind that.

Austin then has this idea that "explicit performative utterances" such as


(7) I promise that the earth is flat.


is neither true or false. Surely, if "know" behaves a bit like "promise",
then, Austin would say, it's no good us trying to investigate the truth
about a knowledge claim for surely such things can not be said to be either
true or false. And that's where I disagree, of course!

My position is
more akin to Warnock -- who was Stampe's tutor in Oxford --). Warnock
allows that a "I promise that p" can be false in ways that Stampe does
not.


Stampe
was probably unaware then what fuzz linguists will say about this Gricean
notion of _what is said_. There is an online essay by J. Saul (Dept of
Sheffield, York) about "Grice and what is said". One of the consequences of my unhappiness with Grice's notion of
What-Is-Said what that I was once enamoured of D. Wilson's notion of
"What-is-Explicated" but now I'm no sure.

The idea, for me, is to have a parallelism a la what follows. Let's just
stick to "state" (that the cat is on the mat by uttering 'the cat is on the
mat') as the relevant _force_ here: The different claims can be made:


(15) U utters 'The cat is on the mat'
(16) U says that the cat is on the mat
(17) U explicates that the cat is on the mat
(18) U explicitly conveys (my current favourite) that the cat is on the mat.


These, for Grice, are analysed, I think, in terms of

(19) U _means_ that the cat is on the mat.


This, for Grice, will be explicated, with reference to:


(20) U _believes_ that the cat is on the mat.


Where does "state" fit in? Well, naturally we have:


(21) U states that the cat is on the mat

We've seen that Grice uses "performative form" only once in _Studies_
(p.134). What about 'speech act'. From the index:


19 [I'd add page 18]. Prolegomena. Discussion of Searle.
On whether "stating that p" is conventional. Grice says it's not.

100. Grice refers to Searle's 'What is a Speech Acts' and _wickedly_
remarks, "Searle apparenly offers me a counterexample. I'm never sure. He
is mainly concerned to adapt my account of meaning to his current purpose
(a definition of 'promise'), rather than refine my account so as to be
better suited to its avowed end".

121-2. He is concerned with the definition of "U says that the cat is on
the mat'. For that, he says, we need, (a) to specify the conditions which
will be satisfied by a range of speech acts, which one may call 'central'
or fundamental'. He seems to foreseeing all that idle linguistic botanising
I'm so prone to do. Grice would say that "state" and "order" are all that
is required! "(b) to STIPULATE that, by uttering X (e.g. 'the cat is on the
mat'),

U _says_ that the cat is on the mat if
U _states_ that the cat is on the mat.


(c) to define, for each speech act, "U V-s that p" ("U states that p", "U
orders that p") in terms of "U _means_ that p. This last bit is very
central, as Murphy notes, for an account such as Stampe, and originally,
Schiffer (_Meaning_).(Schiffer: U _meant_ x as a statement/order, etc).

362. Account of ground-floor speech acts (state, order) and higher speech
acts that "don't touch the truth-value (dictive content) of the U's
expression.

55. speech act account of truth. Strawson.

I am reminded here of a telling passage by Levinson in Pragmatics (p.241).
"As Grice has argued 'Mood Operators', "one may hope to achive a motivated
taxonomy of speech acts (or performative verbs) by building up complex
communiative intentions and forces from just _two_ primitive propositional
attitudes, 'want' and 'belief'. Surely, in 'Method in Philosophical
Psychology', Grice even suggests that (a) we can view 'believe' and 'want'
as both meaning _accept_ (cfr. Post by Tapper), and (b) in any case,
'believe' _is_ quite easily reducible to 'want'.


Re: Austin's four examples of "performative" in _How to Do Things With Words_:

(22) I do take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife.
(23) I name this ship The Queen Elizabeth.
(24) I give and bequeath my watch to my brother.
(25) I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.

In the Gricean approach, as we've seen, we have U
states that p, U believes that p, U wants that p, U means that p. The
propositional content seems to be essential. This distinguishes it from
other approaches (Austin, Searle) where the "propositional content" is
optional... I may have to think about that.

Stampe has a wonderful essay (in
_Synthese_ as I recall) called "Show and Tell". When I read that I had not
seen the Simpson episode of the girl going to a school Show and Tell and
missed Stampe's point completely!



As Schiffer pointed out in his DPhil (before Ross's
arguments about the underlying performative verb behind all utterances)
Stampe's point would possibly lead to a regress (Harnish is not sure it does).

I think Stampe has it best with "informing", which, as his
colleague (F Dtretske) in Michigan pointed out (Stampe credits Dtretske
quite a bit, and he is also credited by people working on "know", too), is
very much a factive. In that "I inform you that it rains" supposes a causal
chain from the very _rain_ to your act of meaning that it rains to your
_informing_ that it rains. (Stampe thinks "show" and "tell" are just as
factive, "Mary showed that she knew", "Mary told them that the King was dead".

'My brother gets the watch' is about to be
_realised_ by, inter alia, my bequeathing, but it need not. I.e. nobody may
read the will, and the watch does _not_ go to my brother. This is where I
think I side with Warnock against Stampe...

There's more to promising and stating and
bequeathing than utterer's intentions! You have to be in a _position_ to
bequeath. I think. Can I bequeath all I have to Marilyn Monroe (She's
dead). I don't think so. I guess the most the Gricean can do is conform
himself with an analysis of "U _meant_ it _as_ a bequeath, whether or not
it in point of actual fact _was_ bequeath, or that he was bequeathing that p.



It is dubious whether, and I think this is Stampe's point, by
uttering "I state that p" it would be false that you are _stating_ that p.
Maybe I have it all wrong here. This relates to the TWO TRUTH claims which
I think are involved in the explicit performative formula.

I think that in the "I will that p" case, it's not quite exact what you
write: "then what I say will be true". Surely, the bequeathing does not
_guarantee_ I think that the Brother _does_ get the watch (Recall we said
that p = The brother gets the watch). The brother may be dead, or the
bequeather perhaps never Owned A Watch... That is _not_ for me surprising.
Many speech acts do _not_ presuppose the truth of the propositional
content, and some actually deny it ("I deny he'll get the watch"). What
Stampe wants to say, perhaps, is that, if the circumstances are
appropriate, then U can be said to _bequeath_ the watch, and it is _this_
proposition, 'The Will Writer Bequeaths His Watch to His Brother", which
would be, by definition (slighly circular) of "right circumstances", true.

But in some _usages_ of say, you presuppose the
truth of p, in some you don't, and in some you presuppose the falsity of p,
too.


Murphy wrote: "Stampe fudges the reduction of performative to constative in the same way Levinson does."

fudge. Is that a performative (I hereby fudge that p).
fudge: 1. put together in a a makeshift or dishonest way, fake.
2. deal with incompetently

Murphy it just right about the verb "reduce" (in reduction). Note
that if Stampe and Levinson fudged like that, it's partly Austin to blame.

<< We may hope that any utterance which is in
fact performative will be reducible (in some
sense of that word) to an utterance in
our "normal form" >>

He is bothered with sentences like "The cat is on the mat". Surely, Austin
says, that's truth-conditionally equivalent to "I state that the cat is on
the mat". (The U means more or less the same thing). Now, "the cat is on
the mat" is _not_ a performative. So what has Austin in mind? He wants to
show, then, that "Shut the door" which presumably _is_ a "primary" as he
calls it, performatory or performative use of language, would be thus
reduced, to _I hereby order you that the door is shut by you_...

In any case I want to bring to attention this use of the verb "reduce"
brougth about by Austin early on. The passage above is from the essay repr.
in Caton (by Austin, but translated by -- Warnock!).

For, Austin's strategy there is that, the constantivist would go, the first
step is to _reduce_ "Shut the door" to "I hereby order you that the door is
shut by you" and _then_ proceed to treat, quite naturally, the explicit
performative formulae as, being in the indicative, a constative or
statement-making utterance (Note the cognate of "constate" with "state").

I'm dubious though if anyone would think that, for a
bequeathing to be _quite_ successful, the proposition "p" must get "true"
as value.

I think that the utterance is a _partial_ (i.e. a necessary, but not a
_sufficient_) reason by which the proposition "U bequeaths that his brother
is to have the watch". In the case of the proposition "Brother Gets the
Watch", I don't think it's either. For _that_ proposition gets valued as
true provided the brother does or does not get the watch. A different proposition would be:

(29) Brother Gets The Watch AS WAS BEQUEATHED
by his Departed Brother.

in which case, I suppose, it should be also true that the Brother did so
bequeath. But note that people are prone to misuse "as" so that the "as" in
(29) may be interpreted as:

(30) Brother Gets the Watch LIKE HE WOULD
if his Departed Brother Had Bequathed It.

in which case, 'Departed Brother Bequeaths the Watch' is _not_ necessary
for the truth of (30).

One has to be very careful with reductions. E.g. Grice's reduction of
"A means that p" to "A believes that p" (meaning or semantic stuff to
propositional attitude) is said to backfire to him in that it provides a
nice vicious circle. For how would you analyse psychological stuff without
recourse to semantic stuff?

And there's something to be said about the implicature, too.



Some further quotes. This time, from J. L. Austin's
"Performative-Constative", a translation, by good ol' friend of Austin's,
G. J. Warnock. In Caton, _Philosophy and Ordinary Language_:

"Well, now that we have before us this idea of the performative, it is very
natural to hope tht we could proceed to find some criterion which wuold
make it possible for us to answer the question whether a particular
utterance is performative or not. Now, there exists one normal form in whch
the performative finds expression. Curiously enough, this form has a
_thoroughly constative_ look to it!" (p.24).


To say "Shut the door" is every bit as performative as to say 'I hereby
order you to shut the door'"
"We may hope that any utterance which is in fact performative will be
reducible (in some sense of that word) to an utterance in our "normal
form"". "People have the impression that were a constative utterance is in
question, the case is different from performatives: anybody at all can
state anything at all. What is he's ill-informed? Well, then, one can be
mistaken, that's all. It's a free country, isn't it. To state what isn't
true is one of the Rights of Man."


"It is pretty evident that the formula "I state that...' is closely similar
to the formula 'I warn you that...'. I will now examine this craze for
being either true or false. Is it the case that there is nothing here in
the least analogous with 'truth'? He speaks of "explicit constative" (p.36)
(So Does Bach).


"The distinction is not well founded, since the formula "I state that"
shows all the characterisitc by which I thought performative utterances
were to be identified". If we do linguistic botanising, 'I state that...'
won't occupy the conspicuous position what we want to give it. This boils
down to saying that the constative/performative distinction is just
inadequate. We need a _general_ theory." J Devaux: "The absence of truth
and falsity seems to me difficult to allow". "As for why utterance of this
sort aren't true or false, I think it's true BY DEFINITION, of ALL acts,
that they occur or they don't, but can't be true or false". "A performative
utterance can't be true (or false). When I say 'I bet you sixpence it will
rain tomorrow' the bet that I make can't be said to be true or false. What
can be true or false is that I made the bet. The fact of saying 'I bet you'
can't really be questioned, or be said to be _true_ (or false). I don't see
how anyone can imagine it could be. Devaux: "We've come to a dead end".


"If, at the moment when the affianced parties pronounce the sacramental
"Yes, I do take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife", suppose someone
came along and asked whether 'I do take take this woman' was really _true_.
We'd take him for a lunatic! Many performative utterances do have, at first
sight, the air of statements. Thus, with 'I warn to you that the ice is
thin', one can _very easily_ go 'wrong': For one, if one relies on Grammar,
it counts as 'indicative', and thus capable of being true or false." "In
'By article 37, I promise to go', the utterance is constative, can be true
of false, in spite of the fact that it contains the formula designed for
promising. We're led to say: this is a historic present tense, not the kind
of present tense we're interested in." "performative/constatitve" as _uses_
of utterances (p.45). Poirier: In saying "I order" I may describe myself
giving an order". "In reply to Poirier, can there be a logic of
performative utterances? I would be inclined to say yes. But at the same
time with this reservation: that I think we should have to be quite sure we
know what we mean by 'performative utterance'. "I know" WOULD BE COUNTED AS
A PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCE. "I do not want to make the expressive function of
a _peformative_ utterance with respect to our mental life, the essential,
or even a main, feature of a performative utterance."


Austin's list of 'verbs' in _How to Do things with words_,
alphabetically ordered, and numbered! (I'm using those mentioned by Austin
only when providing the taxonomy, in the final lecture). The interesting
thing, I think, is that they are explicit performative verbs, i.e. they all
admit the pattern "I hereby V to you that p", and Austin would add, it's
the felicitious uttering of the utterance which constitutes the V-ing. The
Constativist will add that such a formula "I V to you that p" can be said
to be _true_ or _false_ (or at least that the embedded "p" can):


A
1. accept
2. acquit
3. adhere (to)
4. adopt
5. advise
6. affirm
7. agree
8. analyse
9. announce
10. annul
11. answer
12. am determined to
13. apologise
14. applaud
15. appoint
16. apprise
17. approve
18. argue
19. ask
20. assess


B


21. beg
22. begin with
23. ?believe
24. bequeath
25. bet
26. bid you farewell
27. bind myself
28. blame
29. bless


C


30. calculate
31. call
32. challenge
33. characterise
34. champion
35. choose
36. claim
37. class
38. command
39. commend
40. commiserate
41. complain of
42. compliment
43. concede
44. conclude by
45. condole
46. congratulate
47. conjecture
48. consent
49. convict
50. contemplate
51. contract
52. correct
53. countermand
54. covenant
55. criticise
56. curse


D


57. dare
58. date
59. declare closed
60. declare for
61. declare my intention
62. declare open
63. dedicate
64. dedicate myself to
65. deduce
66. define
67. defy
68. degrade
69. demote
70. demur to
71. deny
72. deplore
73. deprecate
74. describe
75. diagnose
76. direct
77. dismiss
78. distinguish
79. don't mind
80. ?doubt
81. drink to


E


82. embrace
83. ?emphasise
84. enact
85. engage
87. entreat
88. envisage
89. espouse
90. estimate
91. excommunicate
92. explain


F


93. favour
94. felicitate
95. find as a matter of fact
96. fine
97. formulate


G


98. grade
99. grant
100. give
101. give my word
102. grumble about
103. guarantee


H


104. hold as a matter of law


I


105. identify
106. illustrate
107. inform
108. intend
109. ?interpose
110. interpret


K


111. ?know


L


112. levy
113. locate


M


114. make it
115. mean
116. mean to
117. measure
118. mention


N


119. name
120. neglect
121. nominate


O


122. object to
123. oppose
124. overlook
125. order
126. overlook


P


127. pardon
128. pay tribute
129. place
130. plan
131. plead
132. pledge myself
133. postulate
134. pray
135. press
136. proclaim
137. promise
138. propose to
139. protest
140. purpose
141. put it at


Q


142. quash


R


143. rank
144. rate
145. read it as
147. reckon
148. recognise
149. recommend
150. refer
151. regard as
152. rejoin
153. remark
154. repeal
155. report
156. reprieve
157. repudiate
158. resent
159. resign
160. revise
161. rule


S


162. sentence
163. shall
164. side with
165. state
166. swear
167. sympathise


T


168. take it
169. tell
170. testify
171. thank
172. toast
173. turn to


U


174. understand
175. undertake
176. urge


V


177. value
178. veto
179. vow
180. vote for


W


181. warn
182. welcome
183. wish
184. withdraw


One may wonder what's the use of all those lists! It's a refutation of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein said,
"language has many usages, indeed infinite": Austin, who used to say that
"Some Like Witters but Moore's my man" said in his BBC lecture (ref. below):

"Certainly, there are a great many uses of language. It's rather a pity
that people are apt to invoke a new use of language whenever they feel so
incined, to help them out of this, that, or the other well-known
philosophical tangle. We need more of a framework in which to _discuss_
these usages of language. And I also, I think we should not despair _too
easily_ and talk, as people are apt to do, abut the _infinite_ uses of
language. Philosophers will do this when they have listed as many, let us
say, seventeen. (But even if there were something like 10,000 uses of
language, surely we could list them all in time. This, after all, is no
larger than the number of species of beetle that entomologists have taken
the pains to list" ('Performative Utterances', p.234)

Austin's four examples:

(22) I do (take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife).
(23) I name this ship the queen Elizabeth.
(24) I give and bequath my watch to my brother.
(25) I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.


Compared with


(31) Damn


Warnock's example -- from bridge --:


(32) Three no trumps.


(33) I promise to go.
(34) I bid you farewell.
(35) I hereby warn you that the ice is thin.
(36) By uttering "I V that p", U V-s that p.
(37) By uttering "I V that p" U _means_ that p.
(38) By uttering *"I marry thee" U marries thee.
(39) I advise you to resign


Austin's example of non-perfomatory use of "I promise"


(40) A: What do you do when your wife complains
of your habitual indolence?
B: I promise to work harder.


Harrison's test:


(41) A: I promise not to be late.
B: (i) That's true
(ii) That isn't true.


Stampe's criticism:


(42) A: I promise I won't be late.
B: Don't _say_ you won't be late. You know it isn't _true_.


Speranza's test for "know" as _not_ performative:


(43)*I hereby know that p.


cfr.


(44) I hereby promise that I will come.


Speech Acts and Conventional Implicature. Austin has it: "Even if by
uttering what you say you imply that p is true, you are still not _stating_
that p is true."


(45) I hereby warn you that, being a philosopher,
John is dangerous.
(+> John's being danger follows from his being a philosopher).


Truth-conditions implied in:


(46) I promise/announce/claim/warn/insist, etc that I will come.
(47) I ask/wonder-aloud/inquire whether Joe is alive
(48) I insist/demand/command/order/tell Joe to come


Concatenated Peformatives:


(49) I deny that I bit him but admit that I kicked him.
(50) I warn you that he is dangerous, but ask you to see him.


"Imply" is _not_ a performative:


(51)*I hereby hint/implicate/suggest/insinuate that you are living above
your means.


Various syntactic collocations of "I constate" (Holdcroft):


(52) I hereby constate that Jill is there.
(53) Jill is there. (non-use. Merely _implicated_)
(54) I constate to you that Jill is there.


Parenthetical Use of the Performative (Urmson):


(55) Jill, I constate to you, is there.


(57) Jill is there, I constate to you.


Embedded Performatives:


(58) I declare/state/announce/constate that I V that p.
(59) I admit that I concede the election was a fraud.
(60) I announce that I hereby promise to be timely
(61) I insist that I dare you to leave now.


Perlocutionary Verbs Don't Allow A Peformatory Use:


(62)*I hereby convince you that you are wrong
(63)*I hereby persuade you that you are wrong
(64)*I hereby frighten you that you are in danger.


Vendler's tense-based test for performatives. In _Res Cogitans_:


(65) A: How long have you known that they are separated?
B: Oh, I've known that _for years_.


(66) A: For how long have you reported that they are separated?
B: *Oh, I've reported that _for years_.


(67) A: When did you report that you saw him?
B: At 5 pm.


(68) A: When did you know that you saw him?
B: *At 5 pm.


Ambiguity of "decide": Performative or Propositional Attitude Verb, or
Neither?


(69) I decide to go home.
(70) I usually decide to go home when he becomes offensive.
(71) I hereby notice that we have strawberries for tea.


(72)*For how long have you noticed?
(73)*For how long have you promised that you'd go?


(74) I constate that it is raining
(75) I warn you that the ice is thin.


Post-Performative Device:


(76) The ice is thin, and that's a warning.


More Embedding:


(77) I constate that I warn you that the ice is thin


Uses of "know" with "hereby" -- still _not_ performative (from the OED):


(78) And hereby we know that we have known him.
1526 Tindale 1 John ii. 3
(79) I will not reason what is meant heereby.
1594 Shaks. Rich. III, i. iv. 94,
(80) Hereby, we detect the errors of those who evaporate..waters.
1756 C. Lucas Ess. Waters III. 105
(81) I hereby promise to mend the whole in the most scientific manner.
1843 Bethune Sc. Fireside Stor. 11,
(82) Hereby you may know that I am right.
1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) I. 157


Gricean Schema for to Prove Truth-Value Assessability of Explicit Performative
(after Bach/Harnish, "How performatives work, a reply to Searle):


(83) (i) the U has has just said,
"I warn you that the ice is thin".
(ii) I.e. U is _stating_ that
he is warning me that the ice is thin.
(iii) If the statement is true,
U must be warning me that the ice is thin.
(iv) If he is warning me that the ice is thin,
it must be his uttering that consitutes the 'warning'
(For, what else could it be?)
(v) Presumably, he is speaking what he thinks is true.
_________________________________________________________
Ergo:
(vi) In stating that he is warning me that the ice is thin,
U is warning me that the ice is thin.


Original Searle's approach ("How performatives work", _Linguistics and
Philosophy_). A different "constativist" view (Searle has "performatives"
as being true or false. Actually "true").


(84) (i) U utterered "I hereby warn you that the ice is thin"
(ii) The truth-conditions of the utterance is such
that by that very utterance U _intends_ to make
it the case that he warns me that the ice is thin.
(iii) Ergo, in making the utterance, U manifested
an intention to make it the case by that utterance that
he warned me that the ice is thin.
(iv) Ergo, in making the utterance U manifested an
intention to _warn_ me that the ice is thin.
(v) Warnings are a class of actions where the manifestation
of the intention to perform the action is sufficient
for its performance, given that certain other
conditions are satisfied.
(vi) I assume those other conditions _are_ satisfied.
(vii) U warned me that the ice is thin, by that utterance
_________________________________________________________
Ergo:
(viii) U both said that he warned me that the ice is thin,
and made it the case that he warned me that the
ice is thin. Therefore, he made a true statement.


Hedged Performatives (PhD B Fraser, Boston Univ).


(85) I must ask you to leave


(86) I can promise you'll be home
but I won't.


(87) A: I want to thank you for the Beaujolais
B: Come on, then, thank me!


(88) A: I would suggest you try some.
B: But _do_ you so suggest? Your hedges bore me!


(89) I must forbid you from cutting off your right arm.


(90) A: I am able to promise you I won't squeal
B: I take it you don't then.


(91) I would suggest a shot of Irish whiskey, but I won't.


Ross's examples:


(92)*I ask you where the bus station is.
(93)*I fire you.
(94)*I threaten you.


(95) I warn you that if you do that again I'll make you stay home.
(96)*I warn you that if you do that again I'll let you stay home.
(97)*I warn you to give me a dollar.


Syntactic Parsing for "Explicit Performatives" -- note the NP, "you" --
which doesn't seem to make sense with "I know _you_ or _to you_ that it is
raining":


(98) S1
.
. .
. .
. .
NP VP
. .
. .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. V NP S
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
I warn you that the ice is thin.


Ambiguity of "That's Not True" (Lakoff vs. Lewis).


(99) A: I constate that I am innocent
B: That's not true!
+> i.e. that you are innocent.
~ +> you constate that you are innocent.


For Lewis, "that's not true" means "It's not true you constate".


(99) I swear that I have never taken a bribe.


Lakoff's remarks on Austin's examples of performatives:


(100) A: I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorow
B: (i) That's false, because
you don't have a penny to your name.
You didn't just make a bet.


(ii) *That's true. You did just bet me sixpence.


(101) A: I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth.
B: (i) That's false you have no authority to
give a name to that ship!
(ii) That's true -- you did just give
that name to that ship.


(102) A: I do take this woman as my lawful wedded wife.
B: (i) That's false. You are already married!
(ii) That's true. He did just marry them.


'Performative Antinomies' So called by Lakoff:


(103)*I hereby promise that I won't keep this promise.


(104)*I hereby advise you that you don't follow this advice.


(105)*I hereby order you not to obey this order.


Persistence of the Antinomy in Oratio Obliqua:


(106)*By uttering 'John and Bill left' U constated that Bill left.


Further cases:


(107) I regret your son is dead.
(108) I point out that there are counterexamples to your theory.
(109) John pointed out that there are counterexamples to my theory.


Austin's four examples in 'Performative-Constative' (Translated by Warnock):


(110) I name this ship Liberte.
(111) I apologise.
(112) I welcome you
(113) I advise you to do it.


Further examples by Austin in that paper:


(113) "Explicit Performative Formula": I hereby V to you that p.
(114) Dog!
+> I hereby warn to you that the dog is about to attack you.


(Austin remarks that Englishmen are more likely to say just "Dog" --
"England being a country more practical than ceremonious")


(115) Shut the door
+> I hereby order you to shut the door.


Discussed by Austin as ways in which an explicit performative can go wrong
vis a vis matters related to truth-conditions (preparatory conditions):


(116) A: I bequeath my watch to you.
B: But you haven't got a watch!


Austin's analysis of the preparatory conditions for "state". "None".


(117) A: I'm bored
B: I state you are not.
A: What do you mean, I'm not?
What _right_ have you to say how I feel?
B: But what do _you_ mean, what right have I?
I'm just _stating_ what your feelings are.
That's all.
I may be mistaken, surely, but what of that?
I suppose one can always make a simple statement,
can't one?


Austin adds. "No. One can't _always_." But we know that he feels one _can_
for otherwise he would have had that "No, one can't always" as A's reply up
there!


Another non-performatory use of "promise" (I fail to see why this is not
performatory):


(118) By Article 37, second sub-sectin, paragraph 3, I promise to go there.


Austin's test: "Did he really?"


(119) I wonder if he really did welcome him.
(120)*I wonder if he really does bid him welcome.


Austin has as infelicitious:


(121)*I hereby imply that p.


Cfr. Holdcroft, 'Some forms of indirect communication', and the whole idea
(by Grice) of a conversational implicature...


Austin's further examples. Can't one just _say_ something without
performing one of those blooming speech acts?


(122) In saying that it was raining, I was not
betting or arguing or warning: I
was simply stating it as a fact.


(123) In saying tht it was leading to unemployment
I was not warning or protesting: I was
simply stating the facts.


Rude:


(124) A: I think he did it.
B: That's a statement about you.


(125)A: I state that he did it.
B:*That's a statement about you.


Further cases:


(126) I divorce thee


Discussed by Levinson in _Pragmatics_. Apparently operative in the Middle
East countries.


(127) I rubify this apple (call it red)


====
Appendix 4: An ever growing bibiography!


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Espcially
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II Conditions for happy performatives
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Lecture VII: explicit performative verbs
Lecture XI: Statements, performatives,and illocutionary force.
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