Abstract
This article deals with the factivity and effectiveness of Russian propositional speech verbs. Some Russian propositional speech verbs can be factive if their subordinate proposition is always true, and some can be effective predicates if the speech act always accompanies a change of the recipient’s mental state. Russian propositional speech verbs are divided into four groups according to their factivity and effectiveness, i.e. speech verbs that are 1. factive and effective, 2. factive and non-effective, 3. non-factive and effective, and 4. non-factive and non-effective. Among Russian propositional speech verbs, non-factive and non-effective verbs are in the majority, and there are very few Russian speech verbs that are factive and non-effective. The other groups of Russian speech verbs are semantically characterized: the factive and effective ones have a ‘revealing’ semantic component and the non-factive and effective ones—one of ‘informing’.
Аннотация
Данная статья посвящена анализу фактивности и эффективности русских пропозициональных глаголов речи. Некоторые из русских пропозициональных глаголов речи могут быть фактивными предикатами, если пропозиции в подчиненных предложениях всегда являются верными, а некоторые могут быть эффективными предикатами, если данный речевой акт всегда сопровождается изменением у реципиента ментального состояния. Русские пропозициональные глаголы речи разделяются на четыре группы: глаголы, которые являются 1. фактивными и эффективными, 2. фактивными и неэффективными, 3. нефактивными и эффективными и 4. нефактивными и неэффективными. Большинство русских пропозициональных глаголов речи входят в группу нефактивных и неэффективных глаголов, а очень мало глаголов речи—в группу фактивных и неэффективных глаголов. Остальные группы глаголов речи обладают определенными семантическими характеристиками: в фактивных и эффективных русских глаголах речи имеется семантический компонент ‘обнаружения’, а в нефактивных и эффективных—‘информирования’.
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Notes
Kobozeva (1985) suggests question—answer and implication tests to identify Russian speech verbs (glagoly reči). According to the question—answer test, one can answer Da ‘yes’ to a question with the phrase skazal(a, i) čto-nibud’ ‘said anything’ if the predicate in the answer is a speech verb, as (i) illustrates. The implication test verifies whether govorit’ ili pisat’ ‘say or write’ can replace a given verb (ii). If a verb passes both tests, it is a core Russian speech verb. For instance, passing the two tests, the Russian verbs soobščit’ ‘to inform’ and žalovat’sja ‘to complain’ are typical speech verbs. If a verb passes only one test, it is a speech verb in a peripheral status. If a verb does not pass any of them, it is not a speech verb at all. I apply these criteria to identify Russian prototypical and peripheral speech verbs governing subordinate clauses with čto ‘that’.
-
(i)
—
On
skazal
čto-nibud’?
he
said
anything
‘Did he say anything?’
—
Da,
on
soobščil,
čto
put’
otkryt.
yes
he
informed
that
way
open
‘Yes, he said that the way is open’. (Kobozeva 1985, p. 97)
-
(ii)
Petja
žalovalsja
drugu,
čto
žena
ego
ne
ponimaet.
Petja
complained
friend
that
wife
him
not
understand
‘Petya complained to his friend that his wife didn’t understand him.’
→
Petja
govoril
ili
pisal
drugu,
čto
žena
ego
ne
ponimaet.
Petja
said
or
wrote
friend
that
wife
him
not
understand
‘Petya said or wrote to his friend that his wife didn’t understand him’. (Kobozeva 1985, p. 99)
-
(i)
Cf. the following examples from Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1971, pp. 345–348):
-
(iii)
I want to make clear the fact that I don’t intend to participate. [factive]
*I assert the fact that I don’t intend to participate. [non-factive]
-
(iv)
I regret having agreed to the proposal. [factive]
*I believe having agreed to the proposal. [non-factive]
-
(v)
*I resent Mary to have been the one who did it. [factive]
I believe Mary to have been the one who did it. [non-factive]
-
(iii)
The English factive to know and other epistemic verbs also do not always pass these syntactic tests, as (vi)–(viii) illustrate (Hazlett 2010, pp. 505–506). However, this does not mean that Kiparsky and Kiparsky’s criteria for English factives are implausible, inasmuch as the counterexamples are not categorically unacceptable or acceptable. As for (vi) and (vii), inserting the preposition of after the verb can make them sound better, and the infinitive subordinate clause, such as (viii), is not always acceptable.
-
(vi)
*I know the fact that I opened the door.
-
(vii)
*I know having opened the door.
-
(viii)
I know Martin to have opened the door.
-
(vi)
http://www.cred-insur.ru/pages/vibor_strahovshika_po_kasko/ (27 July 2020).
Russian emotion predicates are generally considered to be factives, but this only holds for those emotion predicates whose stimulus is retrospective. If their stimulus is prospective, just as in bojat’sja ‘to be afraid’, the emotion predicates cannot presuppose that the given proposition is true. It also should be pointed out that the factivity of Russian emotion predicates depends on the predicate type. Russian adverbial predicates of emotion (e.g. rad ‘to be happy’) are authentic factives, while the speaker does not necessarily suggest that the subordinate clause proposition is true when a Russian emotion verb (e.g. radovat’sja ‘to rejoice’) has been used (Padučeva 1985, pp. 70–71).
According to Hooper (1975, pp. 114–121), true factives presuppose their complements under any conditions and include the English verbs to regret, to resent, to forget, to amuse, to suffice, to bother, to make sense, to care, to be odd, to be strange, to be interesting, to be relevant, to be sorry, to be exciting, etc., most of which are emotion predicates. Semi-factives cannot infer the truth of their complement and include to find out, to discover, to know, to learn, to note, to notice, to observe, to perceive, to realize, to recall, to remember, to reveal, to see, etc. most of which are predicates of knowing.
The subject of an emotion predicate always knows the embedded proposition, but the subject of a predicate of knowing sometimes does not:
-
(ix)
Ona
ne
rada,
čto
on
našel
den’gi.
She
not
happy
that
he
found
money.acc
‘She isn’t happy that he found the money.’
-
(x)
Ona
ne
znaet,
čto
on
našel
den’gi.
She
not
knows
that
he
found
money.acc
‘She doesn’t know that he found the money.’
-
(ix)
The English speech verb to tell is classified as a half-factive in Vendler’s classification. Half-factive predicates do not presuppose the truth of the subordinate clause proposition, just as non-factive predicates, but can govern an interrogative subordinate clause, just as many factive predicates can. The English verbs to tell, to predict, to state, to report, to guess, to inform, to admit, to warn, to anticipate, etc. belong to this hybrid group (Vendler 1980, pp. 284–287).
In most cases the subject is supposed to know the whole fact, but he or she does not necessarily know it.
-
(xi)
On
ne
skazal
ej,
kto
ukral
den’gi,
potomu čto
i
on
ne
znal.
he
no
told
her
who
stole
money.acc
because
also
he
not
knew
‘He did not tell her who stole the money because he didn’t know either.’
-
(xi)
Hazlett (2010, p. 520) argues that to tell WH P is a factive, while to tell that P is not, and the English verb to tell is polysemous as regards factivity. The WH subordinate clause proposition of the Russian skazat’ ‘to tell’ is generally also considered a fact, but you can find many counterexamples to that assertion, as, e.g., (xii):
-
(xii)
Nu,
on
skazal
mne,
kogo
naznačajut
direktorom,
well
he
told
me
who.acc
appoint.3pl
director.ins
no
ja
ne
očen’-to
doverjaju
ego
svedenijam.
but
I
not
much
trust.1sg
his
information.dat
‘Well, he told me who will be appointed director, but I don’t trust his information.’
(Bulygina and Šmelev 1988, p. 58)
-
(xii)
The Russian verb dokazat’ is not a genuine speech verb but merely located in the periphery of this group. The two tests for Russian speech verbs suggested by Kobozeva (1985) support this. The Russian verb dokazat’ passes the question-answer test, making (xiii) acceptable, but it does not pass the implication test. This means that the sentence in (xiv) cannot be always true:
-
(xiii)
—
On
skazal
čto-nibud’?
He
told
something.acc
‘Did he say something?’
—
Da,
on
dokazal,
čto
ona
prava.
Yes
he
proved
that
she
right
‘Yes, he proved that she was right.’
-
(xiv)
On
dokazal,
čto
ona
prava.
≠⇒
On
skazal
ili
napisal,
čto
ona
prava.
He
proved
that
she
right
he
told
or
wrote
that
she
right
‘He proved that she was right.’
‘He said or wrote that she was right.’
-
(xiii)
Šatunovskij (2001, pp. 27–31) argues that soobščit’ is divided into the factive soobščit’1 and the non-factive soobščit’2, and soobščit’ as well as its synonym (pro)informirovat’ are factive predicates though sometimes they accompany propositions that are not in coincide with the facts. I admit that this is one of the ways to explain the factivity of soobščit’, but I would argue that according to this approach, even a non-factive speech verb can have a contextually factive subtype.
It should be pointed out that the recipient differs from the addressee in that the latter is a person who receives the message in the real speech event, but the former is a person who receives the message in the speech event depicted in the sentence. In other words, the addressee is the speaker’s interlocutor, while the recipient is the subject’s interlocutor.
The morphological analysis and the lexical meaning of each word will not be added to the Russian examples in Sect. 4 for lack of space and necessity.
Austin (1962, XII) and Searle (1977, p. 7) include the English verb to swear in the group of commissives that commit a speaker to some future action. This also holds for the Russian verb kljast’sja ‘to swear’. Both the English ‘to swear’ and its Russian counterpart have another function, too. In (33), kljast’sja commits a speaker to the truth of the proposition. It would be better to classify this verb as a verdictive (in terms of Austin) or a representative (in terms of Searle).
In the aspectual pair osvedomljat’ – osvedomit’, the imperfective osvedomljat’ is rarely used and the perfective osvedomit’ is used often in the past participle form indicating a given event’s result.
Their iterative and praesens historicum functions have an effective reading, but their effectiveness is not constant.
Unlike most verbs referring to a perlocutionary act (Austin 1962, p. 130), uverit’ can be used in a performative utterance. The performative sentence uverjaju vas ‘I assure you’ is supposed to mean ja uveril / uverila vas ‘I assured you’, but obviously it does not always change the recipient’s mental state (Padučeva 2004, pp. 355–372). Therefore, Padučeva argues that the perfective uverit’ does not always presuppose a change of the recipient’s mental state. The correlation between performatives and effective predicates should be analyzed in more detail, but I will not discuss it here.
The Russian verb vrat’ can be translated as ‘to be mistaken’ or ‘to be in error’ (Visson 2013, p. 22).
-
(xv)
—Gde on živet? V Bostone—vru, v Vašingtone.
‘Where does he live? In Boston. I’m mistaken. It was Washington.’
-
(xv)
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Chung, J. On the factivity and effectiveness of Russian propositional speech verbs. Russ Linguist 44, 267–295 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-020-09233-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-020-09233-y