Judgment Ascriptions
Abstract
Some propositional attitude verbs are only felicitous with complements
containing some “subjective predicate”. In terms of the theory of predicates of personal taste proposed by Lasersohn (2005), it would seem that
these verbs identify the “judge parameter” of the embedded proposition
with the matrix subject, and there have been suggestions in this direction
(Stephenson 2006, Lasersohn 2007, Nouwen 2007). I argue that it is possible and preferable to analyze the verbs in question as setting the judge
parameter and doing nothing more. Thus in the absence of a subjective
predicate in the complement clause, the matrix emerges as redundant.
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The Problem: Subjective Attitudes
Across languages, a class of propositional attitude verbs seem to require that
the embedded proposition be open to subjective assessment, and this, in turn,
seems to hinge on the presence of some “subjective predicate” in the clause.
Such a predicate can be a predicate of personal taste, as in the Swedish (1), the
positive form of an adjective not of personal taste, as in the German (2), or a
modal used in a deontic or bouletic sense, as in the French (3).
(1)
Några tycker att kärnkraftverk är vackrare
än vindmöllor.
some think that nuclearworks are beautifuller than windmills
‘Some find nuclear power plants more beautiful than windmills.’
(2)
Die Preise sind zwar
normal für Eau de Parfums, aber ich
the prices are tobesure normal for eau de perfumes but I
persönlich finde trotzdem, dass sie hoch sind.
personally find nonetheless that they high are
‘The prices may be normal for perfumes, but I still find them high.’
(3)
90% trouvent que chacun
devrait comprendre au moins une
90% find
that everybody should understand at least one
langue étrangère en plus
de sa langue maternelle.
language foreign in addition of his language maternal
‘90% feel that anybody should know at least one foreign language.’
These verbs are, if not synonymous, very similar in meaning. The English paraphrases might display the verb think, but this verb has beside the “subjective”
sense relevant here an “objective” sense close to believe.
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Beside these finite-clause embedding verbs, there are variants and other verbs
embedding nonfinite clauses, like English find and consider , and there are other,
less unambiguous verbs, like English feel or German meinen.
If the complement clause does not contain a suitable predicate, the sentence
is infelicitous, as are (4)–(6). ((4) is Norwegian, featuring the verb synes.)
(4) #Mange forskere
synes at dinosaurene ble utryddet
av et
many researchers seem that dinosaurs were extinguished by a
voldsomt kometnedslag for 65 millioner år
siden.
violent cometimpact for 65 million years since
(5) #Die meisten Menschen finden, dass es
einen Osterhasen gibt, der
the most
men
find
that there a
easterhare is
who
am Ostersonntag die Eier versteckt.
on Eastersunday the eggs hides
(6) #Les Catholiques romains trouvent que les ames de ceux qui
the Catholics Roman find
that the souls of those who
meurent sans
avoir entierement satisfait à la justice divine, vont
die
without have entirely
satisfied to the justice divine go
après la mort dans le purgatoire.
after the death into the purgatory
It is not obvious what makes these sentences semantically deviant. To be sure,
there is an intuition that it does not make sense to entertain a subjective attitude
to something which is either a fact or not a fact, irrespectively of the subject;
but this is yet far from an explicit and explanatory analysis. The aim of the
present paper is to explore some ways, some of which have been suggested in
the literature, to account for the anomaly. The solution to be argued for is a
radically reductionist one, implying that the sole semantic contribution of the
attitude verb and its subject is to fix the “judge parameter”, whether this is
a semantic index, as proposed by Lasersohn (2005), or a contextual index, as
argued i.a. by Glanzberg (2006), and that what is wrong with (4)–(6) is that
the judgment ascription is redundant: It turns something which is already a
constant function into a constant function (the same one).
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Lasersohn’s Theory of Judgment
Lasersohn (2005) presents a theory of predicates of personal taste. In this theory,
the intension of any expression is what amounts to a function from judges to
traditional intensions (functions from worlds and times to extensions). For most
expressions, these functions are constant, but for so-called predicates of personal
taste, they are nonconstant, meaning that the judge matters.
Some expressions can set the judge parameter to a particular individual
(constant or variable), turning a nonconstant function from judges to traditional
intensions into a constant function. Thus a PP for α for some DP α, if it modifies
an adjective like fun or tasty, can fix the judge variable in the meaning of the
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adjective to the constant individual denoted by α or the variable individual
bound by the quantifier denoted by α.
When a personal taste predicate is modified by a for PP, or, in Slavic languages and to a certain extent in German, a dative DP, it does not license a
subjective attitude verb:
(7)
Jeg synes at spillet
er morsomt (#for alle).
I seem that game-the is fun
(for all)
When this is seen in connection with the facts from (4)–(6), the following generalization suggests itself: A subjective attitude verb is infelicitous with a complement clause with a meaning that is constant wrt. the judge. This implies
that the judge parameter matters for more than predicates of personal taste:
The positive morpheme, where in Kennedy’s theory (2007) it would be one of
the things that the ‘standard’ parameter is sensitive to, and certain modals,
where in Kratzer’s theory it would be one of the things that the ordering source
parameter is sensitive to.
Some scholars have suggested that verbs like English consider , find, or think
shift the judge of their object to their subject. In the formulation of Nouwen
(2007: 5), “such an approach would have to say that”, i.a.,
x thinks 1 y is tasty is true in world w with respect to judge j iff,
in x’s think-worlds, y is tasty is true with respect to judge x1
Stephenson’s (2006) proposal is (in a slightly simplified notation)
think j,t,v = λφ λx believe j,t,v (λjλtλv φx,t,v )(x)
Lasersohn’s (2007) suggestions concerning consider are similar. The common
denominator of these analyses is this: The subjective attitude verb is reduced
to the corresponding objective attitude verb modulo the shift in the judge: The
proposition φ is transformed to that constant function from judges that assigns
to any j φ(x) where x is the subject of the attitude verb.
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Radical Reductionism
That analysis has two disadvantages. First, it predicts that (8a) has more or less
the same meaning as (8b) (assuming an ambiguity between think1 and think2 ).
(8)
a.
b.
She thinks1 he is handsome.
She thinks2 he is handsome for her.
This is of course not borne out. The analysis could be defended by arguing that
the attitude verb in the paraphrase should be factive, as in (8c).
1 The verb has a subscript 1 because think is (correctly I think) assumed to be polysemous.
Nouwen considers this approach but rejects Lasersohn’s semantic relativist theory altogether,
along with, i.a., Moltmann (2006).
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(8)
c.
She is conscious that he is handsome for her.
But it is still questionable whether this is a fair rendering of (8a).
Second, it would seem that the answer that this analysis has to offer to the
question what is wrong with sentences like (4)–(6) is not entirely satisfactory.
The answer offered is this. Note that on this analysis, the subjective attitude
verb does two things: it fixes the judge of the proposition and it expresses an
objective attitude; and if the judge of the proposition is already nonvariant, so
to speak, as there is reason to believe it is if there is no subjective predicate
in the sentence expressing the proposition, then, one might say, the first half
of what the attitude verb does is superfluous, so the corresponding objective
attitude verb (whichever that may be) should be chosen to begin with. While
this explanation is not totally off the mark, to my mind it insufficiently accounts
for the strength of the anomaly of sentences like (4)–(7).
Now one may reasonably ask what motivates the reduction of the subjective
attitude to the objective attitude (modulo the judge shift) in the first place – why
not simplify matters and say that all the subjective attitude verb does is fix the
judge of the proposition? This way, it can be shown, a sentence with a subjective
attitude verb and a complement sentence without a subjective predicate means
the same as the complement sentence alone, so the whole matrix is redundant;
this offers a stronger explanation for the anomaly of sentences like (4)–(8).
(9) #Homer finds Bart gay.
The denotation of the subjective attitude verb, say Swedish tycka, can be defined
in the following way:
tycka j,t,v = λφ λx φx,t,v
If φ is “already” a constant function from judges, the application of the attitude
verb and its subject has no effect; a constant function cannot be made a different
constant function. Shifting an immaterial parameter is a vacuous operation.
Sketch of a proof:
Show that for any φ constant wrt. j and any a, tycker (φ)(a) = φ.
Because φ is constant wrt. j, φ = λjλtλv φb,t,v for an arbitrary b.
Therefore, tycker (φ)(a) = λjλtλv(λjλtλv φb,t,v )a,t,v = φ.
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Problems
Both this radical analysis and the moderate analysis face at least two problems.
First, the subjective attitude verb has tense, and judgment is relative to time:
(10)
Music is always connected to the personal imagination of beauty. I am
growing, I am changing and my imagination of beauty is also changing.
What was beautiful for me today is not necessarily beautiful tomorrow.
Yesterday I did not find this piece of music beautiful; today I do.
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The judge must not be an individual per se but a time-slice of an individual.
Second, one and the same proposition may depend on two different judges,
reminiscent of double indexing in modal logic:
(11)
The mother snipe thinks that the ugliest baby birds are beautiful.
(12)
The mother snipe thinks that her youngs are prettier than they are.
Here we need a silent actuality operator not over worlds but over judges, allowing
ugliest and than they are to be assessed by j, the actual judge (the hunter, the
speaker, . . . ), while beautiful and prettier are assessed by the mother snipe.
References
Glanzberg, Michael (2006) “Context, Content, and Relativism”, forthcoming in
Philosophical Studies.
Kennedy, Chris (2007) “Vagueness and Grammar: The Semantics of Relative and
Absolute Gradable Adjectives”, to appear in Linguistics and Philosophy.
Lasersohn, Peter (2005) “Context Dependence, Disagreement, and Predicates of
Personal Taste”, in Linguistics and Philosophy 28, 643–686.
Lasersohn, Peter (2007) “Relative Truth, Speaker Commitment, and Control of
Implicit Arguments”, to appear in Proceedings of NELS 37 , GLSA, Amherst.
Moltmann, Friederike (2006) “First-Person-Oriented Genericity and Relative
Truth”, conditionally accepted for publication in Mind .
Nouwen, Rick (2007) “Predicates of (Im)personal Taste”, manuscript, Utrecht
University.
Stephenson, Tamina, Cathrine (2006) “A parallel account of epistemic modals
and predicates of personal taste”, in L. McNally and E. Puig-Waldmüller (eds.),
Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 11 , Barcelona, 583–597.
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