Attitude predicates: the classification

This file is the root of the attitude API: the semantic classification a clause-embedding predicate's lexical entry records, from which its combinatorial properties are derived. A doxastic predicate quantifies over epistemic or doxastic alternatives, Hintikka's knowledge and belief (Doxastic.Alternatives); Karttunen's split of the factives into full and semi-factives is Factivity, on the presupposition facet. The classical cut between know and believe is derived from the two: a doxastic predicate is veridical when it is factive or its alternatives are epistemic (Attitude.IsVeridical), exactly when every denotation of that kind is (Doxastic.isVeridical_forall_iff). A preferential predicate has the evaluative valence of a gradable predicate, positive for hope and negative for fear, and is clausally distributive or not. Villalta's degree comparison relates its subject to a question exactly when it relates her to some answer, while worry, Mandarin qidai and care relate her to the question itself and can hold of no particular answer. Attitude composes the two dimensions, and verb entries record one.

Implementation notes

For a factive the factivity alone decides IsVeridical, so the alternatives of a factive entry do not bear on its veridicality. Entries classify them by Hintikka's knowledge: a factive whose meaning entails that the holder knows its complement, as know, realize, discover, notice, remember, forget and see do, quantifies over epistemic alternatives.

The binary cut between veridical and non-veridical is the classical default; Giannakidou's three-way veridical, nonveridical, and antiveridical taxonomy and finer attitude typologies such as Anand and Hacquard's cut the space differently. Clausal distributivity is recorded, as in Qing and Uegaki's classification, rather than derived, since the non-distributive predicates share no denotation. Speech-act predicates are outside the classification.

References

• Karttunen 1971b, Some observations on factivity formalized
• Villalta 2008, Mood and Gradability: An Investigation of the Subjunctive Mood in Spanish
• Anand & Hacquard 2013, Epistemics and attitudes formalized
• Elliott et al. 2017, Predicates of Relevance and Theories of Question Embedding
• Giannakidou 1998, Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency
• Qing et al. 2025, When can non-veridical preferential attitude predicates take questions?
• Hintikka 1962, Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions formalized