Ways of asserting. English assertive nouns between linguistics and the philosophy of language

The methodology used involves descriptive as well as exploratory statistics. As for descriptive statistics, reliance scores are calculated and a chi-square test added. As for exploratory statistics, a hierarchical cluster analysis is applied to the data. Results show that (i) constructional possibilities are part of the semantic-pragmatic meaning of the noun, and (ii) there is a correlation between semantic-pragmatic similarity and distributional similarity. At the same time they lend argument from linguistic patterns to what philosophy states about the commitment to belief, truth, and knowledge that define assertive speech acts, thus showing the potential that descriptive English research has for application across disciplinary boundaries.