Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:42:30.844Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How to refer to one's own words: speech-act modifying adverbials and the performative analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Anita Mittwoch
Anita Mittwoch
Affiliation:
Department of English, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The performative analysis claims that every sentence we utter refers, self-reflexively, to our utterance of it, that every sentence comes equipped in its underlying structure with a higher performative clause of the form I (or Speaker) + Verb of Communication + You (or Hearer) (see especially Ross, 1970; Lakoff, 1971, 1972). The self-reflexive nature of the performative clause is brought out even more clearly by the addition of hereby, which functions as a deictic instrumental adverb referring to the utterance-act. In this paper I shall deal with two sets of data that have been invoked in support of this analysis and I shall try to show that on closer scrutiny they disconfirm it, at least in its generally accepted form. Both concern sentence adverbials that modify not the propositional content of the sentence to which they are attached but what I shall provisionally call the pragmatics of the speech situation; the solutions I shall suggest as an alternative to the performative analysis will, however, differ considerably for the two sets.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , September 1977 , pp. 177 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bartsch, R. (1972). Adverbialsemantik. Frankfurt: Athenäum.Google Scholar
Greenbaum, S. (1969). Studies in English adverbial usage. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1972). Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jespersen, O. (1940). A modern English grammar on historical principles. Pt 5. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Kempson, R. (1975). Presupposition and the delimitation of semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1971). On generative semantics. In Steinberg, D. D. & Jakobovits, L. A. (eds), Semantics: an interdisciplinary reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 232–296.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1972). Linguistics and natural logic. In Davidson, D. & Harman, G. (eds), Semantics of natural languages. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Matthews, P. H. (1972). Review of Jacobs, R. A. & Rosenbaum, D. S. (eds), Readings in English transformational grammar. JL 8. 125–136.Google Scholar
Mittwoch, A. (1973). ‘I don't really know’: deletion of finite sentential complements in English. Scripta Hierosolymitana 25. 342–347.Google Scholar
Mittwoch, A. (1976). Grammar and illocutionary force. Lingua 40. 21–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Partee, B. H. (1973). The syntax and semantics of quotation. In Kiparsky, P. & Anderson, S. (eds), Festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt Rinehart.Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1972). A grammar of contemporary English, London: Longman.Google Scholar
Reinhart, T. (1975). Whose main clause? Harvard studies in syntax and semantics I. 127–172.Google Scholar
Ross, J. (1970). On declarative sentences. In Jacobs, R. A. & Rosenbaum, P. S. (eds), Readings in English transformational grammar. Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell. 222–272.Google Scholar
Ross, J. (1973). Slifting. In Gross, M., Halle, M. & Schützenberger, M. P. (eds), The formal analysis of natural languages. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Sadock, J. M. (1974). Toward a linguistic theory of speech acts. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Schreiber, P. A. (1972). Style disjuncts and the performative analysis. LIn 3. 321–347.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (1969) Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar