Direction of fit and the grammar of attitude reports
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Abstract
Crosslinguistically, ‘believe’ and related verbs often have complement clause syntax different from that of ‘want’ and related verbs, although the reasons behind this pattern remain poorly understood. Moltmann 2024 suggests an avenue to explore: the possibility that finite complements apply to attitudes that have a word/mind-to-world direction of fit whereas nonfinite complements apply to attitudes that have a world-to-word/mind direction of fit. In this reply, I show that Moltmann’s suggestion faces apparent challenges from hope and from fiction predicates like pretend and dream, although it may be possible to overcome these challenges via appropriate refinements to Moltmann’s direction of fit diagnostics and/or to the hypothesis linking direction of fit to finiteness. I close by asking why the grammar of attitude reports might correlate with direction of fit and whether a reduction to truth-conditional properties of attitude reports is possible.
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