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Factuality and intonation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

John Oakeshott-Taylor
John Oakeshott-Taylor
Affiliation:
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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Abstract

Starting from the well-known difference between I ‵thought he was married (which he is) – where the complement is given a factual interpretation – and I thought he was ‵married (but he isn’t) – which is counterfactual – this article examines the syntactic, semantic, contextual and prosodic conditions under which factual and counterfactual interpretations can emerge. Factuality is distinguished from factivity, and concerns a person’s (usually the speaker’s) subjective assessment of whether the propositional content of a sentence or sentence fragment conforms or conflicts with his perception of reality. The modal nature of factuality is stressed, as is the contribution of tense and intonation to the emergence of factuality interpretations.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

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