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Verbs of judging: An exercise in semantic description

a
Charles J. Fillmore
a
Ohio State University
Published online: 21 May 2009.

To cite this article: Charles J. Fillmore (1969) Verbs of judging: An exercise in semantic description, Paper in Linguistics, 1:1,
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 91

Verbs of Judging: An Exercise in Semantic Description

Charles J. Fillmore
Ohio State University
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Preliminaries

In very many ways, assertions made by linguists about the mean-

ings of utterances have been confused and misleading. In the earliest,

mentalist conception of the meanings of linguistic forms, one spoke

of an image or concept or idea that existed in the head of the

speaker before the utterance and in the head of the hearer after the

utterance. In behaviorist definitions of meaning, such as that pro-

posed by Bloomfield, the meaning of a linguistic form was taken to

be the situation which preceded the performance of an utterance and

the behavior, on the part of the participants in the speech act,

which followed it. In the purest of the structuralist notions of

meaning, the meaning of a linguistic form was given as that feature

of social situation which is shared by all utterances of the form,

but not present in the utterances of at least some other linguistic

forms.

The mentalist definition is of no use to anybody who wants to

know whether he correctly understands some linguistic form, if only

for the reason that there is no way of knowing whether the images

he has in his mind when he produces or encounters the form are

shared by his interlocutors. The behaviorist definition is a kind

of disguised insult: if instead of telling you what a linguistic

 92

form means, I tell you something about when people have used it

and vhat happened after they did, I'm not telling you what the

form means, I'm asking you to figure out for yourself what it

means. The pure structuralist definition is the most hopeless one

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of all: if we wish to understand the definition, we must presumably

know something about the social situations in which language

theorists have proclaimed it; but most of us have simply not heard

it often enough or in enough contexts to come up with any particu-

larly reliable conclusion. Completely formulaic 'definitions* of

meaning have never served our discipline well.

There are theories of meaning, or rather techniques of describing

meaning, which regard the meanings of linguistic forms as decomposable

into smaller entities of one kind or another, usually called

'features' or 'components'. The ascription of such components to

words and morphemes has often been completely ritualistic, and it

is typically carried out in such a way that wherever there are

problems, it is certain that the analyst is dealing with unclarities

in our understanding of objects in the world or institutions in the

associated culture, rather than with facts of the type that are

correctly called linguistic.

To show what I mean by this, I ask you to consider one of the

'acceptable* ways of determining the semantic properties of a noun

like wolf. A procedure has been suggested by several authors that

when a sentence is not semantically odd, the analyst can be sure

that the selectional restrictions associated with the lexical items

in that sentence are satisfied and he can perform various replace-

ments in these sentences to detect both the selectional requirements

 93

of some of the words (especially the verts) and the inherent

properties of others (especially the nouns). From such contempla-

tions we can discover that the word wolf has the feature 'Physical

Object' because of its occurrence in the acceptable sentence (l);

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we note that it has the feature 'Living' because of a sentence like

(2); and we conclude that it has the feature 'Animate' because we

can say (3).

(1) The wolf fell.

(2) The wolf died.

(3) The wolf felt it.

When both an affirmative sentence and its negative counterpart are

odd, the sentence being nevertheless fully grammatical, this is a

sign of unsatisfied seleetional restrictions; the analyst posits

semantic properties of words in ways that will account for the

violation. Thus, from the fact that both (It) and (5) are semanti-

cally anomalous, we are forced to conclude that, while the verb-

phrase requires a 'Human' subject, the noun wolf has the feature

'Non-Human'. We know from the oddity of sentence (6) that the

noun has the feature (say) 'Non-Rigid'. And so on.

(it) The wolf got a divorce.

(5) The wolf didn't get a divorce.

(6) I accidentally broke your wolf.

We would very soon discover, if we carried out this process

much further, first of all, that there is no stopping place, and

secondly, that wherever it is unclear to us whether or not a

sentence is odd in the intended sense, this unclarity has a lot more

to do with what we happen to believe about the creatures known as

wolves than with what we, as speakers of English, know about the

linguistic properties of the noun wolf.

 The difficulties that I have mentioned exist, it seems to me,

because linguistic semanticists, like the philosophers and

psychologists vhose work they were echoing, have found it relevant

to ask, not 'What do I need to know in order to use this form

appropriately and to understand other people when they use it? ',
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tut rather, 'What is the meaning of this form?'. And having asked

that, linguists have sought to discover the external signs of

meanings, the reflexes of meanings in the speech situation, and

the inner structure of meanings. It is apparent that the wrong

question has teen asked.

From the writings of the ordinary language philosophers, linguists

can learn to talk, not so much atout the meanings of linguistic

forms—where 'meanings' are regarded as abstract entities of some

mysterious sort—but atout the rules of usage that we must assume a

speaker of a language to 'know' in order to account for his ability

to use linguistic forms appropriately. Although it is true that the

use theorists in philosophy have not given linguists a tool which

we can merely take over and turn instantly to our own use, I believe

that we can profitably draw from some of the philosophers' discussion

of language use when we propose or examine semantic theories within

linguistics. In particular, we can turn our own inquiry toward the

conditions under which a speaker of a language implicitly knows it

to te appropriate to use given linguistic forms.

Among the ordinary language philosophers, there is some

question of whether a use theory of meaning should tegin with words

or with sentences; we must hope that there is some way of resolving

this conflict. Those philosophers who are particularly concerned

 95
o

with words speak of there being rules for the use of words, and

such rules include the principles for the composition of words

into utterances; but these philosophers would deny that one can

speak of the 'use' of a sentence. The analogy is with chess: it

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makes sense to speak of what to do with a knight, or how to use a

knight in a game of chess ; but it does not always make sense to ask

what one can do with a game of chess.

On the other hand, there are philosophers who are mainly

concerned with what one can do with sentences. Utterances can be

used in performing various acts (after J. L. Austin we may call

these 'illocutionary acts')—such things as informing somebody that

a state of affairs exists, making a prediction, committing oneself

to future actions, urging, promoting, suggesting, insulting,

threatening, requesting, and so on. To such philosophers, the

really basic notion of semantic theory is the 'illocutionary act

potential' of sentences—the range of things that one can do in

saying specific sentences. In this view, the uses of words must be

derivatively specified: to know how to use a word is to know how to

use it in sentences with different illocutionary act potentials.

Philosophers who have paid the most attention to the illocu-

tionary forces of utterances have sometimes exemplified what they

call the 'happiness conditions' or 'felicity conditions1^ for the

use of given sentences. The most common type of example is an

imperative sentence like (7).

(7) Please shut the door.

For this sentence, a reasonable set of happiness conditions

includes the following:

 96

(i) the speaker and the addressee of this sentence

are in some kind of relationship vhich allows the speaker

to make requests of the addressee,

(ii) the addressee is in a position where he is

capable of shutting the door,

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(iii) there is some particular door which the speaker

has in mind and vhich he has reason to assume the addressee

can identify without any further descriptive aid on the

speaker's part,

(iv) the door in question is, at the time of utterance,

open,

(v) the speaker wants that door to become closed.

An important fact that is typically omitted from a philosopher's

record of the set of happiness conditions of a sentence is that

the various conditions are separately related to different specific

facts about the grammatical structure of the sentence. For example,

from the fact that the form of the sentence is imperative, we infer

those conditions that relate to the speaker-addressee relationship;

from the presence of the definite article, we infer the understanding

that there is some mutually identifiable door to which the speaker

is referring; the others are inferrable from the ways in which we

understand the verb shut.

More importantly, however, it needs to be pointed out that some

of these conditions are really preconditions for the use of the

sentence, rather than information about what the actual illocutionary

force of utterances of the sentence is. Of the conditions I

mentioned, for example, most of them are completely unaffected by

 97

negation. Thus, if I say (8),

(8) Please don't shut the door.

the same conditions hold about the door being identifiable, about

its being now open, and about the relations between speaker and

hearer. The only one that changes is the one about the speaker
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wanting the door closed.

The Discovery and Description of Presuppositions

I believe that the speech communication situation can be

usefully analyzed into two levels or aspects, and these we might

refer to as the presuppositional and the illocutionary. By the

presuppositions! aspects of a speech communication situation, I

mean those conditions which must be satisfied in order for a

particular illocutionary act to be effectively performed in saying

8
particular sentences. Of course, we need not be concerned with

the totality of such conditions, but only with those that can be

related to facts about the linguistic structure of sentences. In

other words, while it is perfectly true that an utterance of sentence

(7) cannot be effective if spoken to someone who does not know

English or is out of hearing distance, these are necessary factors

to every speech communication act, and do not have any special part

in the understanding of that particular sentence.

In everyday conversation, we constantly make use of both the

implicit, or presuppositional, and the explicit, or illocutionary,

levels of communication. We know, for example, that our utterances

can be Judged as inappropriate or incorrect not only on the grounds

that some state of affairs has been wrongly described, or that one
 98

has acted in bad faith in promising something or varning someone,

tut also on the grounds of presupposition-failure. We also knov

that by counting on the addressee's knowing the presuppositions

of sentences, and by using sentences deliberately under conditions

of presupposition-failure, we can sometimes communicate certain

special messages or attitudes or achieve certain secondary

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communication goals—as would be the case if somebody were to ask

me, 'When did you stop beating your wife?'.

Any complete account of the grammatical description of a

language will need to bring in presuppositional facts at many

points. In the counterfactual conditional description of a

sentence, for example, one must mention that an utterance of the

sentence presupposes the falsity of the proposition contained in

the if-clause. In the most typical use of the definite determiner

the speaker presupposes the existence of the object indirectly

described by the associated noun-phrase. An imperative sentence

presupposes the kinds of speaker/addressee relationships mentioned

earlier in connection with sentence (7). And so on.

I believe that linguistic theory is in need of a kind of analysis

of the speech act that takes into account the presuppositional and

the illocutionary aspects of speech communication, and I think that

eventually linguists will be able to construct a system of rules by

means of which, given the complete grammatical description of any

sentence, one can 'compute1 the full set of the presuppositions

which must be satisfied for any in-good-faith utterance of that

sentence. The grammatical information that is needed for this

computation is extremely complex, involving lexical information

 99

associated with individual vords, global structural properties

of sentences, the placement of contrastive stress, and Just about

anything imaginable. What I myself have been more directly

interested in is that relatively small aspect of the problem which

can be associated with the lexical description of particular verbs.

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One set of verbs in English that can serve to illustrate this

aspect of lexically specific information is the one which includes

the words speakers of English use in speaking about various types

of interpersonal relationships involving Judgments of worth and

responsibility.

Verbs of Judging

I turn now to a consideration of some of the role concepts that

one needs to have available for discussing the semantic structure

of these verbs. I begin by identifying the terms needed for

describing what I might like to call the 'role structure'9 of these

verbs, that is, by identifying the various types or entities or

aspects-of-situation that are needed for describing the conditions

under which it is appropriate to use these verbs.

First of all, we will need to refer to some situation, action,

deed, or state of affairs: for this I choose the term Situation.

The Situation we are speaking of may be one which favorably or

unfavorably affects some individual: I refer to this being as the

Affected.

There may be some individual concerning whom it is relevant

to ask whether he is responsible for the Situation—he may have

brought it about, or allowed it to come about. We may call him

 100

the Defendant.10

Then there may be somebody who makes some kind of moral

Judgment about the Situation or about the Defendant's responsibi-

lity for the Situation, or vho makes a statement about such matters;

ve may call him the Judge.

The Judge may simply make a Judgment, and keep it to himself.

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On the other hand, he may make a Statement—that is, he may say

something about the Situation or about the Defendant. If he makes

a Statement, this Statement is addressed to somebody: we may call

that person the Addressee. The term 'Addressee' in the descriptions

offered belov must be understood as referring to the addressee,

not of the utterance which contains the verbs we are examining, but

of the speech act which these verbs might refer to. Where needed,

we shall refer to the speaker of the sentence in a speech-

communication-situation as the Locutionary Source, and the addressee

of that sentence as the Locutionary Target.

The words that we shall examine are accuse, blame, criticize.

credit, praise, scold, confess, apologize, forgive, justify, and

excuse. The ways in which the various role concepts I o us t

mentioned can figure in semantic descriptions may be illustrated

as follows : Suppose that somebody named John told me that Nixon

was soft on Communism, and suppose that in referring to that event,

I utter sentence (9).

(9) John accused Hixon of being soft on Communism.

I, the speaker of that sentence, am the Locutionary Source; and

you, my intended addressees, are the Locutionary Target. John is

the Judge, Nixon is the Defendant; being soft on Communism is the

 101

Situation; I am the Addressee, since John's statement was

addressed to me. Suppose now, by way of a second example, that

John had written an obscene letter to Mary, and then told her

that he was sorry; and suppose that in reporting this to you I

utter sentences (10) and (ll).

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(10) John apologized to Mary for writing the letter.

(11) Mary forgave John for writing the letter.

In each of these cases John is the Defendant and Mary the Affected.

In the sentence with apologize, Mary is also the Addressee of

John's utterance: an apology is directed to the Affected.

In the lexical entries gathered in the Appendix I have

associated with each of these verbs—and with blame in three senses—

various kinds of lexically specific information. In addition to the

semantic properties that I attempted to exhibit in these entries,

the verbs differ in various syntactic ways. For example, the phrase

indicating the Situation is marked off by the preposition of in the

case of accuse, by with in the case of credit, and by for elsewhere;

observe sentences (I2a-c).

(12a) John accused Harry of writing the letter.
(12b) John credited Harry with writing the letter.
(12c) John criticized Harry for writing the letter.

There are, moreover, fairly complicated conditions determining the

responsibility of the Situation as a noun or as a sentential object.

Thus we can say (l3) or (ll») but not (15) or (16).

(13) I accused John of causing the accident.

(lU) I scolded John for causing the accident.
(15) *I accused John of the accident.
(16) *I scolded John for the accident.

With blame, by way of contrast, we find either (17) or (l8). On

 102

the other hand, ve can say (19) but not (20).

(17) I blamed John for causing the accident.

(18) I blamed John for the accident.

(19) I accused John of murder/treason.

(20) *I blamed John for murder/treason.

A syntactic fact unique (in this set of words) to blame is

that when the Situation is represented with a noun, it can be

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realized as the direct object of the verb, with the Defendant

marked off with the preposition on_. Thus we can say either (l8) or

(21).

(21) I blamed the accident on John.

The words criticize and scold agree in that they can function

in syntactically complete sentences even though the offending

Situation is not explicitly mentioned. Thus we can say (22) or

(23)
(22) She criticized him.

(23) She scolded him.

but we do not get, as syntactically complete utterances, (2U) or (25).

(2U) »She blamed him.

(25) *She accused him.

Sentences (2U) and (25) may, however, be used elliptically when

the nature of the offense is known from the context, but they

cannot initiate a conversation. Put differently, (22) is a para-

phrase of (26) while (2U) is a paraphrase of (27).

(26) She criticized him for something.

(27) She blamed him for it.

The full roster of lexical information about these words,

then, cannot be found in the entries exemplified in the Appendix.

12
These contain only information relevant to semantic description.
 103

On examining these entries, the reader will notice that

accuse, criticize, scold, blame in three senses, credit and

praise are verbs that conceptually require an understanding of

the three entities I have indicated as Judge, Defendant, and

Situation. I am thinking of these verbs as they are understood

in such sentences as (28)-(3O).

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(28) John accused Harry of writing the letter.

(29) John credited Harry with writing the letter.
(30) John criticized/scolded/blamed/praised Harry for

writing the letter.

The words apologize and forgive require in their role structure

an understanding of the three entities Affected, Defendant and

Situation. I am thinking of these verbs as they would be under-

stood in such sentences as (31) and (32).

(31) Harry apologized to Mary for writing the letter.

(32) Mary forgave Harry for writing the letter.

The words justify and excuse have much wider uses than I am

able to discuss here, but we can limit our attention to their use

in sentences like (33) and (31*).

(33) Harry justified his having written the letter.
(3*0 Harry excused his writing the letter.

These involve the Defendant and the Situation.

Some of the verbs in our collection refer to linguistic acts.

Accuse, criticize and praise, for example, are used to refer to

situations in which the individual we have classified as the Judge

says something to someone. The content of the linguistic

production is represented in the entry as 'X' in quotation marks,

a variable whose value is identified in the next line.

Certain others of the verbs—for example the second and third

senses of blame—refer not to statements made public by the Judge,

 \ok

but to inner experiences, to inner and possibly imspoken Judgments

made by the Judge. For indicating these in the entries I have

presented the Judge and 'X' as the two complements of THINK, with

the content of the Judge's thoughts indicated on the next line.

The verbs excuse and Justify are also linguistic-act verbs,

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and so is apologize; but forgive is not.

Underneath the statements of what I have called the 'meanings'

of these verbs there can be found one or more formulas that capture

what I take to be the necessary presuppositions of utterances

having these items as their main verbs. The content of the pre-

suppositions, the statements, and the Judgments made by the

subjects of these verbs, are all expressed as propositions or

identity-conditions. They include the following: The Situation is

blameworthy, represented as the word 'BAD' having, after it, the

word "Situation" in square brackets; the Situation is praiseworthy,

represented as the word 'GOOD' having, after it, the word 'Situation'

in square brackets; the Defendant is responsible for the Situation,

represented as the word 'RESPONSIBLE' followed by the words

'Defendant' and 'Situation' in square brackets; or the Situation is

factual, rather than merely conceived. This last I have represented

as the term 'ACTUAL' followed, in square brackets, by the word

'Situation1.

We turn now to the description of the verbs accuse and

criticize.
 105

ACCUSE [Judge, Defendant, Situation (of)] (Performative)

Meaning: SAY [Judge, 'X1, Addressee]
X = RESPONSIBLE [situation, Defendant]
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]

CRITICIZE [Judge, Defendant, Situation (for)]

Meaning: SAY [Judge, 'X', Addressee]
X = BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]
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What is claimed by these descriptions is this : a speaker of English

uses the word accuse when talking about a situation which is

unquestionably bad and he wishes to report the claim that a certain

person is responsible for that situation; he would use the word

criticize when talking about a situation in which there is no

question about who is responsible for it and he wants to report the

claim that the situation was blameworthy. Thus, if I say (35),

(35) John accused Harry of writing the letter.

I presuppose that there was something blameworthy about writing

the letter, and I'm telling you that John said Harry did it. If I

say (36),

(36) John criticized Harry for writing the letter.

I presuppose that Harry wrote the letter, and I'm telling you that

John said that Harry's having written the letter was blameworthy.

It is to be noticed that what is presupposed by the use of one of

these verbs is part of the content of the linguistic act referred

to by the other. ^

These two verbs differ in two other interesting ways. Uses of

the verb criticize presuppose the factuality of the Situation; but

not so for accuse. This distinction is not apparent in the examples

given so far because of the use of the definite article in the

 106

phrase writing the letter. If ve replace this by a Situation-

indicating expression that does not have its ovn existence pre-

suppositions—such as one containing an indefinite noun-phrase—

thiB other presuppositional difference between these two verbs

becomes apparent. Consider the two sentences, (3T) and (38).

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(37) I accused Harry of writing an obscene letter to

my mother.
(38) I criticized Harry for writing an obscene letter

to my mother.

With accuse, there is no presupposition that such a letter was ever

written; with criticize there is.

A second way in which accuse and criticize differ from each

other is that accuse can be used 'performatively1, using that term

in the sense it has been given by Austin. An utterance of a

sentence with this verb in its first person present tense form has

a 'force1 that is different from that of simply conveying information.

An utterance of sentence (39)

(39) I accuse Harry of writing the letter.

can in itself be an accusing act; the verb criticize is not a perfor-

mative verb, and what this means is that performances of sentence (1(0)

C*0) I criticize Harry for writing the letter,

cannot In themselves constitute criticisms.

The verb scold is like criticize In many respects, but it

requires that the Defendant be identical with the Addressee in the

linguistic act referred to by the verb. The Addressee in the

linguistic act referred to by uses of criticize can be anybody. Thus,

I can criticize Harry to his face or behind his back, but I cannot

scold him behind his back. The following is the lexical entry for

scold.
 107

SCOLD [Judge, Defendant, Situation (for)]

Meaning: SAY [Judge, 'X1, Addressee]
X = BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPOHSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: THINK [Judge, 'ACTUAL [Situation]1]
Presupposition: Defendant = Addressee

There may be another presuppositional matter that separates

accuse from criticize and scold. If the offending Situation is

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extremely serious, the words criticize and scold seem inappropriate.

Thus, a sentence like (kl) sounds more natural than either (1*2) or

(1*3).

(Ul) I accused Harry of raping my daughter.

(U2) I criticized Harry for raping my daughter.
(1*3) I scolded Harry for raping my daughter.

This observation probably has nothing to do with specifically

linguistic facts about these verbs, however. It's Just that we

find it difficult to imagine a situation in which somebody is

explaining to somebody else that an act of rape was immoral or in

bad taste.

Blame in one of its uses is a linguistic-act verb; that is,

there is one sense of the verb blame by which I would mean, in

saying 'He blamed me', that he had said something to somebody. This

is the sense I call blarney.

BLAME. [Judge, Defendant, Situation (for)]

Meaning: SAÏ [Judge, 'X', Addressee]
X = RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: NOT (RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation])
Presupposition: Defendant 4- Addressee
Presupposition: Judge 4 Defendant

It is this use of the verb that one would find in the following

situation. Harry wrote the letter himself, and then he gave people

to believe that I had written it; I say (Uli).

(1*1*) Harry blamed the letter on me.

 108

In this sense of blame, the Locutionary Source reports the Judge's

statement that the Defendant is responsible for the Situation, but

with the presupposition that the Defendant was not the responsible

one. With blarney, it follows of necessity, the Defendant is not

the Addressee of the Judge's statement, and the Judge is not the
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Defendant. That is, it is not in the linguistic-act sense of

blame that one can blame oneself. Otherwise, blame has much in
19
common with accuse. '

The other two verbs blame are not linguistic-act verbs, but

refer to opinions or thoughts or internal Judgments on the part of

the Judge. Otherwise blame? and blame, a re like criticize and

accuse respectively.

BLAME- [Judge, Defendant, Situation]

Meaning: THIHK [Judge, 'X']
X = BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE: [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

BLAME [Judge, Defendant, Situation]

•Cleaning: THIHK [Judge, 'X']
X = RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

This ambiguity of blame, that is, the division of blame into blameg

and blame2^^ can be illustrated this way. Suppose there's no

question in anybody's mind that I wrote a particular letter, and

what I'm telling you is that John for some reason regarded my action

as blameworthy. I can say, in reporting this state of affairs,

sentence (1*5).

(1+5) John blamed me for writing the letter.

(Underlining identifies contrastive stress.) This is blamep. Or

 109

suppose that there is no doubt of the blameworthiness of this

particular letter, and vhat I'm telling you is that John felt

that I had done it. I can say sentence C*6).

(1*6) John blamed me_ for vriting the letter.

That is blame,.21
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We turn now to the verbs excuse and Justify.22

EXCUSE [Defendant, Situation]

Meaning: SAY [Defendant, 'X', Addressee]
X = HOT (RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation])
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

JUSTIFY [Defendant, Situation]

Meaning: SAY [Defendant, 'X', Addressee]
X = NOT (BAD [Situation])
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

One Justifies an action when there is no question of who is respon-

sible, but where one wishes to say that the action was not really

bad. One excuses an action when there is no question of the badness

of the action, but where one wishes to disclaim responsibility.

Thus, I can Justify bombing a peasant village by pointing out that

this deed was part of some larger endeavor that is essentially good.

I can excuse my having bombed a peasant village by pointing out

that I thought the button I pushed was the cigarette lighter.

This description does not tell the whole story. One very

clear aspect of the use of these verbs is the presupposition that,

in both cases, there is some reason for believing what the Judge

is denying. That is, it is only appropriate to speak of Justifying

an action if on the face of it it looks as if the action was bad;

it is only appropriate to excuse one's behavior if there's some

 110

superficial evidence to believe that one vas fully responsible

for it.

In all of the descriptions that we have examined so far, there

vas something about badness and something about responsibility,

and whenever one of these shoved up in the description of the

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meaning, the other shoved up in the statement of the presuppositions.

With the vords apologize and forgive, however, both of these shov

up in the presuppositions. If I say sentence (1»7),

(1*7) Harry apologized to Mary for vriting the letter.

I am presupposing both that Harry vrote the letter and that there

vas something bad about his doing that; and I make exactly the same

presuppositions if I say sentence (1»8).

(1*8) Mary forgave Harry for vriting the letter.

APOLOGIZE [Defendant, Affected (to), Situation (for)]

(Performative)
Meaning: SAY [Defendant, 'X1, Addressee]
X = REQUEST [Defendant, 'FORGIVE [Victim,
Defendant, Situation]']
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

FORGIVE [Affected, Defendant, Situation (for)] (Performative)

Meaning: DECIDE [Victim, 'X']
X = ? (Affected vill not hold Situation
against Defendant)
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

These vords refer to changes, or requests for changes, in the

negative relationship that has come about betveen Affected and

Defendant as a result of the latter's having committed some offense.

The verbs credit and praise have semantic descriptions very

analogous to those of blame., and criticize respectively, except that

 in

the evaluative predicate GOOD replaces BAD in the presuppositions

of the one and in the 'meaning' of the other.

CREDIT [Judge, Defendant, Situation (with)]

Meaning: THIHK [Judge, 'X']
X = RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: GOOD [Situation]
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PRAISE [Judge, Defendant, Situation (for)]

Meaning: SAY [Judge, Addressee, 'X']
X = GOOD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]

What is apparent from our examination of the semantic properties

of this selected group of words is that we have identified a portion,

at least, of a semantic 'field', in the sense of the German field

el,
theorists. It will of course be interesting to see, first of all,

what structure is discoverable in the vocabulary field we have been

examining (for example, whether it is clear that a language never

needs words analogous to excuse, Justify, forgive and apologize

but with BAD replaced by GOOD, whether there are in the system of

features suggested for these English verbs any 'accidental gaps');

secondly whether there are other verbs so far unknown to me that

fill out or extend the system I have proposed (there are a great

many variants of scold that come to mind (chide, castigate, etc.),

commend has essentially the same analysis as praise, and there is a

set of verbs including admit, confess, concede, etc., which lend

themselves to description in the terms that have been discussed

here); and thirdly, to what extent the concepts that have proved

of service for this group of English verbs can provide descriptions

of the nearest equivalents of these verbs in other languages. All

of these questions I must unfortunately leave to the future.

 112

Appendix

ACCUSE [Judge, Defendant, Situation (of)] (Performative)

Meaning: SAY [Judge, 'X1, Addressee]
X • RESPONSIBLE [Situation, Defendant]
Presupposition: BAD [situation]

CRITICIZE [Judge, Defendant, Situation (for)]

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Meaning: SAY [Judge, 'X', Addressee]

X = BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

SCOLD [Judge, Defendant, Situation (for)]

Meaning: SAY [Judge, 'X1, Addressee]
X = BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: THINK [Judge, 'ACTUAL [Situation]']
Presupposition: Defendant = Addressee

BLAMEj [Judge, Defendant, Situation (for)]

Meaning: SAY [Judge, 'X1, Addressee]
X = RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: NOT (RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation])
Presupposition: Defendant ^ Addressee
Presupposition: Judge 4 Defendant

BLAME- [Judge, Defendant, Situation]

Tleaning: THINK [Judge, 'X']
X = BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

BLAME, [Judge, Defendant, Situation]

Meaning: THINK [Judge, 'X']
X = RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

EXCUSE [Defendant, Situation]

Meaning: SAY [Defendant, 'X', Addressee]
X = NOT (RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation])
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

JUSTIFY [Defendant, Situation]

Meaning: SAY tDefendant, 'X1, Addressee]
X = NOT (BAD [Situation])
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]
 113

APOLOGIZE [Defendant, Affected (to), Situation (for)] (Performative)

Meaning: SAY [Defendant, 'X1, Addressee]
X = REQUEST [Defendant, 'FORGIVE [Victim, Defendant,
Situation]']
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]
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FORGIVE [Affected, Defendant, Situation (for)] (Performative)

Meaning: DECIDE [Victim, 'X']
X = ? (Affected will not hold Situation against Defendant)
Presupposition: BAD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: ACTUAL [Situation]

CREDIT [Judge, Defendant, Situation'(with)]

Meaning: THINK [Judge, 'X']
X = RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]
Presupposition: GOOD [situation]

PRAISE [Judge, Defendant, Situation (for)]

Meaning: SAY [Judge, Addressee, 'X']
X = GOOD [Situation]
Presupposition: RESPONSIBLE [Defendant, Situation]

Footnotes

1. This argument parallels the criticism of philosophical

accounts of meaning found in Austin (1961).

2. See Gilbert Ryle (1953).

3. Ryle (1953), p. 35 of Chappell (1964).

4. See esp. Alston (1964).

5. See Austin (1962), esp. pp. 98ff.

6. See Alston (1964), p. 39.

7. These locutions are due to J. L. Austin.

8. On presuppositions see Frege (1892) and Strawson (1950).

9. The 'role structure' proposed for this group of verbs is

analogous to, but (I believe) distinct from the more general
grammatical role structure of predicates of the type discussed in
Fillmore (1968) and Halliday (1967-8).
 10. I regret the courtroom connotations of the vord 'defendant',
but the other vords that come to mind are more inadequate still.
The vord 'culprit', for example, presupposes that the individual so-
identified vas the one responsible; the vord 'suspect' presupposes
that it is not known whether the individual is responsible. All
three presuppose that the deed vas blameworthy. What is needed is
some word that is neutral with respect to all such presuppositions.

11. Once again, the courtroom connotations are unwelcome. I

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mean merely one who makes or expresses a Judgment about blameworthi-

ness.

12. For an informal survey of the range of information required

in a complete lexicon, see Fillmore (1969).

13. Notice that I am considering the word criticize only in

the sense in vhich the concepts I've been talking about are relevant.
There is also an esthetic sense of criticize, in which it is
synonymous with evaluate on esthetic grounds; but I do not consider
here that sense of the verb.

l4. It is only this sense of apologize that will concern us

here.

15. I use the word SAY in the entries, but it should be under-
stood that the symbolic act in question can be carried out in other
ways besides speaking out loud.

16. I have not, the reader will notice, succeeded in offering

a very helpful description of the meaning of forgive.

17. The basis for separating the presuppositions from the

rest of the meaning is that the presuppositions obtain even when
the sentence is negated or interrogated. Thus, if I say 'John
didn't criticize Harry for writing the letter', I presuppose
Harry's responsibility for the letter Just as much as in the
affirmative sentence; similarly, if I ask, 'Did John accuse Harry
of writing the letter?', I can utter this question in good faith
only if I believe that there is no question that the letter-writing
act was objectionable.

18. See Austin (1962).

19. To some speakers, blame, is a kind of achievement verb,

implying that the Judge succeeded in affecting his Addressee's
beliefs. I think that I would not say '*He blamed it on me, but
fortunately nobody believed him'. I would have to say, 'He tried
to blame it on me, but fortunately nobody believed him'.

20. The distinction being discussed here was pointed out

in footnote 2 in Austin (1956).
 115

21. It is blame3 that we find in the request, 'Don't blame

me!', and blame2 that we find in the reassuring words, 'I don't
blame you'.

22. The distinction between these two verbs was described

in very similar terms in Austin (1956), p. 42 of Chappell (1964).

23. I have called both of these verbs performatives, but

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I have described only apologize as a linguistic act verb. To say

that they are performatives is to recognize that an utterance of
the sentence 'I apologize for writing the letter' constitutes in
itself, if it is acknowledged, the performance of an act which will
change the relationship between the two people; and so, I believe,
is an utterance of the sentence, 'I forgive you for writing the
letter'. In non-performative uses, however, only apologize is a
verb of saying. This we can recognize if we see that it's accept-
able to say 'He apologized, but he didn't mean it', but it's not
acceptable to say, 'He forgave me, but he didn't mean it'. One
would have to say, 'He said he forgave me, but he didn't mean it'.

24. Leading figures in the 'semantic field' school are

Jost Trier (see his Der Deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des
Verstandes: die Geschichte eines Sprachlichen Feldes, Heidelberg,
1931) and Leo Welsgerber (see especially his Vom Weltbild der
Deutschen Sprache, Düsseldorf, 1953-4). See for work representa-
tive of this school, Trier (1931) and Weisgerber (1953-4).

References

Alston, William P. (1964), The Philosophy of Language. Englewood

Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall.

Austin, J. L. (1956). 'A plea for excuses'. Presidential

Address to the Aristotelian Society, 1956; reprinted in

Chappell (1964), pp. 41-63.

Austin, J. L. (1961). 'The meaning of a word'. Philosophical

Papers of J. L. Austin (1961), ed. by J. O. Urmson and

G. J. Warnock, pp. 23-43; reprinted in Charles E. Caton

(1963), pp. 1-21.

Austin, J. L. (1962a). How To Do Things with Words. London,

Oxford University Press.

 116

Austin, J. L. (1902b). 'Performatif-constatif'. La Philosophie

Analytique. Paris: Editions de Minuit, pp. 271-304; reprinted

in Caton (1963), pp. 22-54.

Bach, Enmon and Robert Harms, eds. (1968). Universals in

Linguistic Theory. New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

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Caton, Charles E., ed. (1963). Philosophy and Ordinary Language.

Urbana, University of Illinois Press.

Chappell, V. C., ed. (1964). Ordinary Language. Englewood

Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall.

Feigl, H. and W. Sellars, eds. (1949). Readings in Philosophical

Analysis. New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Fillmore, Charles J. (1968). 'The case for case', in Bach and

Harms (1968), pp. 1-88.

Fillmore, Charles J. (1969). 'Types of lexical information'.

in Kiefer (1969), pp. 83-111.

Frege, Gottlob (1892). 'Ueber Sinn und Bedeutung'. Zeltschrift

für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik 100, pp. 25-50;

reprinted in English translation, as 'On sense and nominatum',

in Feigl and Sellars (1949), pp. 85-102.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1967-8). 'Notes on transitivity and theme

in English'. Journal of Linguistics 3.37-81, 199-277; 4.153-

308.

Kiefer, Ferenc, ed. (1969). Studies in Syntax and Semantics.

Dordrecht, Reidel.

Ryle, Gilbert (1953). 'Ordinary language'. In Philosophical

Review, Vol. 62; reprinted in Chappell (1964), pp. 24-40.

 117

Stravson, P. F. (1960). 'On referring'. Mind 59, pp. 320-

344; reprinted in Caton (1963), pp. 162-193.

Trier, Jost (1931). Der Deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des

Verstandes: die Geschichte eines Sprachlichen Feldes,

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Heidelberg.

Weisgerber, Leo. (1953-4). Vom Weltbild der Deutschen Sprache.

Düsseldorf.