Expressions of mistaken beliefs: a typology - Bill McGregor

1483-344

It seems likely that all languages provide some means of expressing the notion that a belief held by someone in some situation, normally other than the present speech interaction, is false. Surprisingly little has been written about such expressions, which figure marginally in the published grammars of most languages, as well as in the theoretical literature; little also has been written about the typology of such expressions. An exception is my 2024 investigation of mistaken belief expressions in Australian languages, which was based on a corpus of some 149 language varieties. This investigation revealed a range of modes of expression of mistaken beliefs, including by means of more or less dedicated particles and/or enclitics and various types of complement construction involving general verbs of thought; expression by particles and enclitics is the dominant realisation. In this presentation I extend the typology to languages of Eurasia, Africa, the Pacific and the Americas. Preliminary findings include that in Eurasian languages the dominant mode of expression is by some type of complement construction, and that in some languages from all regions the mistaken belief meaning is attested only as a pragmatic implicature of a general statement of thought or belief. Numerous languages, however, admit this implicature of general thought/belief complements while also showing a dedicated construction.


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