Attitude Reports

A critical survey of key issues in the analysis of propositional attitude reports, a central topic in natural language semantics.

Thomas Grano (Author)

9781108437202, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 August 2023

248 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.314 kg

Propositional attitude reports are sentences built around clause-embedding psychological verbs, like Kim believes that it's raining or Kim wants it to rain. These interact in many intricate ways with a wide variety of semantically relevant grammatical phenomena, and represent one of the most important topics at the interface of linguistics and philosophy, as their study provides insight into foundational questions about meaning. This book provides a bird's-eye overview of the grammar of propositional attitude reports, synthesizing the key facts, theories, and open problems in their analysis. Couched in the theoretical framework of generative grammar and compositional truth-conditional semantics, it places emphasis on points of intersection between propositional attitude reports and other important topics in semantic and syntactic theory. With discussion points, suggestions for further reading and a useful guide to symbols and conventions, it will be welcomed by students and researchers wishing to explore this fertile area of study.

Introduction
Foundations
Attitude Reports and Proper Names
The de dicto/de re Ambiguity
de se Attitude Reports
Desire Reports and Beyond
Other Topics
Glossary
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG], Philosophy of language [CFA], Linguistics [CF]