"That"-Clauses in Non-Alethic Utterances

Grice DOES consider 'mean' idioms with non-indicative modes (WoW:VI).

E.g.

By uttering "Smith is tactful," U meant that Smith is tactful.

No problem about that. But in WoW:VI he has

"Smith, be tactful!"

--- Grice is exploring utterances which 'share' a dictum, but not a dictor (in Hare's terminology, Oxford thesis).

----

In WoW:VI he considers then how to accomodate 'that'-clauses with those non-alethic 'moves':

The utterer, by uttering, "Smith, be tactful" meant _THAT_ Smith was to be tactful.

He notes that it is up to a linguistic theory for a particular language to deal with the specifics of that. And right he is.

Incidentally, while there is a lot of truth to Davidson's idea on 'saying that' (that 'that' is a demonstrative -- Davidson quotes from the OED), the cases that interested Grice provide a bit of problem:

U meant that Smith was to be tactful.

Or perhaps they don't.

Because in the case of 'say' (and 'say that') we would have:

U said that Smith was to be tactful.

THIS DOES ALLOW FOR a historical (as per OED) and Davidsonian account:

U said that. Smith was to be tactful (parataxis).

-----

Another mode that Grice considers is the optative and he sometimes regretted that people did not use it that often.

Oh, that Smith be tactful.

-----

By uttering, "That Smith be tactful" U meant that Smith was to be tactful.

For the following is NOT grammatical:

By uttering "Oh, that Smith be tactful" U meant that Smith be tactful.

But perhaps it is. I should revise this.

---- And find the proper Grice quotations.

In any case, just to provide the general formulation and Grice's interest (as I see it):

to provide an analysis for 'mean' sentences, regardless of mode or mood.

He did not seem to have been interested in _alethic_ utterances (i.e. those which are assessable in terms of 'truth-conditions' necessarily) and allowed from a start for utterances other than in the indicative mode (indeed he would regard indicative mode as applying to utterances a category mistake -- mode applies to _sentences_).

He still was clear from a start that such an analysis would introduce a psychological element. Here Grice uses psi as a general term to stand for either belief or some other attitude (notably desire, as in "Close the door!").

------

And he never thought that the complications were too big when it came to non-alethic utterances, in that his analysis still held water.

-----

Or something like that.