Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
5042723 Journal of Pragmatics 2017 11 Pages PDF
Abstract

In this paper, I discuss explicit performative sentences and, in particular, those containing the explicit performative verb “to promise.” I argue that one of the key features of explicit performative verbs is their utterance-reflexive character. In a minimal context, an utterance like “I promise I will finish the paper” can be taken either as an explicit performative utterance, a promise, or as an assertion, which does not constitute a promise but a report of one. An utterance like “I promise now I will finish the paper,” however, in a minimal context, should be taken as an explicit performative. To explain this, I use Prior and Kamp's work on “now” (Prior, 1968; Kamp, 1971) and Korta and Perry's content pluralism (Korta and Perry, 2011). I defend that the role “now” plays when embedded in a performative sentence is consistent with the role it plays when embedded in a temporal operator. In both cases, the role of “now” is to reflexively point to the time of utterance and in neither case is the “now” redundant.

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Arts and Humanities Language and Linguistics
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