Conceptualizing Some Verbs of Propositional Attitudes in English

In this article, we discuss the semantics and syntax of Propositional Attitude Verbs. Our goal is to clarify and illustrate how Propositional Attitudes function and behave and put forth the conceptualization/ formalization of sentences containing this type of Verbs. We will see how intentions and beliefs are useful to study Propositional Attitudes. Also, we will argue that the semantic approach is more adequate than the syntactic one in terms of classifying Propositional Attitude Verbs. This, of course, is carried out in the framework of Conceptual Semantics that was mainly introduced by Jackendoff.


Introduction
Propositional Attitudes are mental states that people constitute about real world; and intentions and beliefs are said to be special cases of these ATTITUDES.In particular, intentions are important for understanding people's minds.Analyzing others' intentional actions is crucial for the analysis of social interaction.I am interested in studying propositional attitudes in the Conceptual Semantics Framework which is introduced in Jackendoff's works (e.g., Jackendoff, 1997Jackendoff, , 2002Jackendoff, , 2007 among others) among others).I will see how people conceptualize situations that contain intentions and/ or beliefs.I will conduct this topic via the analysis of a class of verbs called Intentional Verbs.They are intentional in two senses.The first is that intentionality is their main property; and the second is that they select a volitional/intentional Actor.This is carried out through the analysis of Propositional Attitude Verbs in English.But, before that, we need some background about propositional attitudes, and characterization of Intentional Verbs.

Distinguishing Intentions from Beliefs
Starting from the fact that intentions are a special case of ATTITUDE, we find it very useful to analyze Propositional Attitudes via the analysis of Intentional Verbs.With this in mind, we need to make some distinction between Propositional Attitudes, first.A primary distinction between propositional attitudes arises from the difference between beliefs and intentions.On the one hand, a belief is an attitude adopted by a person toward any situation (state or event, concrete or abstract), at any time, with any combination of characters in it.On the other hand, an intention is an attitude held by a person to perform an action in the future, immediate or far future.Moreover, an intentional action must be self-initiated; the actor must be identical to the holder of the intention.Another distinction between intentions and beliefs is that intentions, unlike beliefs, can be directed only towards future time and the action cannot be previous to the intention (See Jackendoff, 2007, pp. 147-148).

Let us see the examples in (1).
(1) a. John believes himself to have visited his uncle yesterday.As is shown in (1), a belief and claim can be directed toward the past but an intention cannot.Intentions can only be directed toward future.This future directedness or non-past directedness, as is called by Jackendoff (2007), From thes of proposi nature: • Verbs In what fo understand (3).
(3) a. John b.John be Therefore, in cases of actions as in (6a, b, c), the P will take the restirction [+Action] as formalized in (8a), and in cases of situations as in (6d, e, f), the P takes the restriction [-Action] as formalized in (8b).
(8) a. Y convinces X to P.

The Verb Agree
The verb agree in English denotes both Situational and Actional Attitudes' meanings.The verb denotes 'presumption' or 'acceptance' in cases of Situational Attitudes (i.e. to presume that something is such and such), whereas it denotes 'acceptance' or 'decision' in cases of Actional Attitudes (i.e. to accept or decide to do such and such).Consider ( 9).
(9) a. John agreed that it was raining yesterday.
b. John agreed that he was βορν 10 years before Bill.
c. John agreed to visit his υνχλε tomorrow.
In (9a,b) we are in front of Situations where John presumes/ accepts that it was raining and that he was born 10 years before Bill.Therefore, the meaning of agree in these two examples is to presume.The sentence (9c) expresses an Actional Attitude.John has an intention to perform an Action of visiting his uncle.Besides, looking deeply inside the structure of the sentence (9c), we find out that there is a CAUSE function; another person CAUSED John to accept to go to visit his uncle.Thus, the outcome is that John came to INTEND to visit his uncle tomorrow.Thus, the conceptual Structure of (9c) will roughly be: Y CAUSED X to come to INTEND to do such and such.The conceptual structure of sentences in (9) will be: (10) a. Actions: X Agrees to P.

The Verb Swear
Another ambidextrous Propositional Attitude verb that behaves as the above analyzed verbs of is the verb "swear" in English.Take the following examples.Here, the sentence (21a) contains a non-animate and non-volitional actor, the wind, which cannot act intentionally.Yet, it can cause an action or perform an action.In (21b) we have a sentence with an animate and volitional actor but we cannot infer that the action was performed intentionally or contrariwise.(21c) is apparently intentional.Therefore, (21a-c) can be represented as (22a-c).
(22) a.The wind rolled the ball into the room.The conceptual structure in (22a) contains the function CAUSE that holds the two arguments; the Actor, wind, and Theme, ball, the argument over which the action is performed.Here, though the role Actor is non-animate and non-volitional, it can cause an event to happen.Compare this to the conceptual structures in (22b) and (22c).In (22b), I put two representations since the sentence in (21b) is ambiguous.The first indicates that the action is non-intentional, and the second indicates that the action is an intentional action.However, although Jackendoff (e.g., Jackendoff, 1983, pp. 174-187) talks about willful actions, he does not represent for this will/volition.But, he later on adjusted the formalization of conceptual structures of willful actions and added the function VOL to represent volitional/intentional actions (see Jackendoff, 1987, pp. 396-397).Based on this and for empirical reasons, we put forth the representation of (21c) as (22c).The presence of the function INTEND is necessary for making a distinction between intentional and non-intentional actions.

Conclusion
In this article, we saw how intentions and beliefs are very helpful to study propositional attitudes since they are special case of ATTITUDE.However, there are noticeable differences between the two mental states.The most important difference is that intentions are necessary directed toward future.By contrast, beliefs are directed toward all times.Further, beliefs are likely associated with Situations whereas intentions are to be associated with actions .In this respect, distinguishing beliefs from intentions is not on a syntactic but on semantic basis.The semantic division of propositional attitude verbs into Actional Attitude verbs and Situational Attitude verbs is more accurate than the syntactic one.
Furthermore, the holder of the intention to perform an action or bring about an event must bear some properties.The necessary property is that it must be animate, [+ animate].The intentional verbs select animate Actors, and preferably, but not necessary, human Actors, [+human].However, any Actor, even human, is subject to ambiguity.That is, not any action performed by an intentional actor is necessary intentional.The action is judged to be fully intentional if and only if the Actor intends to perform it and bring about a specific consequence.Otherwise, the action would not be intentional, or at least, not fully intentional.
b. John claims to have visited his uncle yesterday.c. *John intends to visit/to have visited his uncle yesterday.

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21) a.The wind rolled the ball into the room.b.John rolled the ball into the room.c. John intended to roll the ball into the room.