This chapter develops a carefully reasoned analysis of Spanish resources enacting the negotiability of propositions and proposals. Following a review of the ways in which English and French structure the negotiability of moves in conversation, the chapter turns to Spanish – demonstrating that it is the Predicator function, realised by verbal group resources, that manages the negotiability of the clause (with respect to those resources ‘most at risk’ in the exchange). The chapter shows that functions such as Subject or Finite have no place in the interpersonal grammar of a Spanish clause and closes with an overview of basic negotiatory structures in Romance languages, from the perspective of functional language typology.

In this paper we extend work on the interpersonal grammar of Tagalog by focusing on ASSESSMENT resources realised through non-pronominal clitics. From a discourse semantic perspective (Martin & Rose, 2007; Martin & White, 2005), ASSESSMENT is centrally involved in the enactment of ENGAGEMENT, as interlocutors negotiate consensus around propositions and proposals, and the attitudes they inscribe or invoke. The meaning of each assessment clitic is characterised as the basis for the formalisation of this resource in system networks. In addition, the role of assessment clitics in discourse is illustrated through move-by-move analysis of two main texts. The paper concludes with some discussion of SFL’s hierarchy of realisation as far as the description of Tagalog ASSESSMENT resources are concerned.

This chapter is a text-based study of the enactment of interpersonal meaning in Mandarin, with particular focus on the MOOD system and structure, part of interpersonal grammar that is involved in the realisation of the discourse-semantic system of NEGOTIATION. The data considered is taken from the genres of criminal case courtroom discourse, realised interpersonally by a tenor of unequal social status and lack of reciprocity of linguistic choices among the speakers. The study adopts an axis-oriented trinocular perspective, foregrounding paradigmatic relations as the fundamental principle of linguistic organisation and reasoning about system-structure relations from above, round about and below. The analysis shows that MOOD in Mandarin is not only responsible for negotiating knowledge and action exchanges between moves in dialogue, but also closely interacts with MODALITY and POLARITY systems that are associated with the subsystem ENGAGEMENT of the discourse semantic system APPRAISAL. Therefore a complementary description of Mandarin MOOD is presented with a perspective oriented toward both NEGOTIATION and ENGAGEMENT.

In this chapter I use a text-based approach to grammatical description in order to explore the interpersonal grammar of Scottish Gaelic. I analyse extracts from two Scottish Gaelic novels from the perspectives of the semantic systems of NEGOTIATION and ENGAGEMENT and correlate distinctions in these systems with function structures at the lexicogrammatical stratum. By these means I build up a partial systems network for MOOD in Gaelic profile, with choices and distinctive features represented in the most economical way and labelled according to their distinctive usages in discourse. On the basis of this analysis, I will suggest that Scottish Gaelic does not have a [declarative] versus [interrogative] opposition in MOOD, redounding with the system of NEGOTIATION at the semantic stratum, but rather an [assertive] versus [non-assertive] opposition, redounding with the system of ENGAGEMENT at the semantic stratum.

In this chapter the editors introduce the theoretical and methodological orientation of the book. They begin with an overview of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), introducing its model of language and two descriptions of special relevance to this volume. The chapter then moves onto key theoretical dimensions – axis (system-and-structure relations), rank, metafunction and stratification. A particular concern of this book is the way in which interpersonal grammatical systems realise the discourse-semantic systems of NEGOTIATION and APPRAISAL. Accordingly, the authors present an outline of NEGOTIATION and APPRAISAL resources relevant to the interpretation of chapters in this volume. At the end of this section of the chapter, the editors introduce the understandings underpinning the model of context proposed by Martin (1992) for interpreting patterns of language use. Next, the chapter reviews the methodological implications of SFL’s theoretical dimensions with respect to text-based data compilation, approaching grammar from above, axial reasoning and functional language typology. The goal here is to establish the common ground on which functional descriptions informed by SFL can be constructed. Finally, each chapter is introduced, highlighting its distinctive contributions to our understanding of interpersonal grammar.

Thischapter defines the book’s object of study and explains its significance in linguistics and philosophy. It then discusses the book’s theoretical framework, its intended readership, and its topical emphasis, and it summarizes the book’s remaining chapters. In a nutshell, the book is about the semantics of propositional attitude reports: sentences centered around clause-embedding psychological verbs like Beatrix thinks it’s raining or Beatrix wants it to rain. Such sentences bear on foundational issues in the philosophy of language concerning the nature of sentence meaning and proper names. They also interact in intricate ways with many semantically relevant grammatical phenomena of interest to linguists specializing in semantics. This book surveys the key data, concepts, and theories concerning the compositional interpretation of attitude reports, assuming a model of grammar that includes a generative syntactic component that assembles structures and an interpretive semantic component that assigns truth conditions to those structures. The book is meant for students and researchers of linguistics who have had at least one or two graduate-level courses in formal semantics.

In this chapter, we move beyond belief reports to consider the semantics of desire reports (like Beatrix wants it to rain), which bring forth new puzzles that have inspired a literature of their own, and that implicate attitude reports in a wide variety of semantically relevant grammatical phenomena such as mood, modality, gradability, focus, and presupposition projection. We give central attention to the competing approaches to desire reports set forth in influential work by Irene Heim and by Kai von Fintel, and we discuss the various issues with these approaches that have inspired refinements and alternatives. We close by scaling out even further to consider broad points of similarity and divergence among different kinds of attitude reports, beyond belief and desire.

De se attitude reports are attitude reports that are, in some sense, first-personal from the attitude holder’s perspective. For example, the sentence Beatrix hopes to win reports a situation where Beatrix thinks: “I hope I win.” It would be false in a scenario where, for example, Beatrix, watching herself competing in a prerecorded televised event without recognizing that she is watching herself, thinks: “I hope she wins.” (Compare: Beatrix hopes that she will win, which is true in such a mistaken-identity scenario.) Considerations of this sort have inspired the view that at least some attitude reports involve quantification not over worlds simpliciter but instead over world-individual pairs (‘centered worlds’). We discuss a number of variants of and alternatives to this approach, the ultimate goal being to build a theory that can accurately predict where de se readings of attitude reports are obligatory and where they are merely possible. We also discuss the analytical connection between de se attitude reports and relevant cross-linguistic grammatical phenomena such as control, indexicality, logophoricity, and long-distance reflexives.

This chapter introducesattitude reports in possible worlds semantics, with attention to the motivation of such an approach and its main challenges, and the major revisions and alternatives that such challenges have prompted. We begin with a brief introduction to possible worlds semantics. We then sketch Jaakko Hintikka’s highly influential possible worlds-based approach to attitude reports and outline the key predictions that it makes. We discuss the problem of logical omniscience that Hintikka’s approach faces, and outline two competing approaches for solving it. We then turn to the more basic problem of logical equivalence that any approach to attitude reports in possible worlds semantics faces; we discuss several solution strategies thatgo under the name ‘hyperintensionality’ in that they proffer ways of modeling propositions that achieve a finer grain than do possible worlds. A recurring question in this discussion is: Which of our intuitions about inference patterns in attitude reports reflect semantic reasoning, and which reflect pragmatic or extra-linguistic reasoning? Finally, we explore two competing hypotheses regarding the compositional semantics of attitude reports.

Here we round up three topics not covered elsewhere in the book. The first is embedded tense, which gives rise to two main puzzles: sequence of tense (embedded past tense that seems not to be interpreted) and double access (embedded present tense that seems to be anchored both to the utterance time and to the matrix evaluation time). We discuss theories of tense in attitude reports that grapple with these puzzles. The second topic is Neg Raising: sometimes, a negated attitude report seems to be interpreted as though the negation were embedded in the complement clause (e.g., a salient reading of Beatrix doesn’t think it’s raining is Beatrix thinks that it’s not raining). We discuss syntactic solutions (negation is pronounced high but interpreted low) as well as semantic/pragmatic solutions (the unexpected interpretation is the result of a semantic or pragmatic inference). Finally, the third topic is intensional transitive verbs, which create attitude reports with ordinary direct objects rather than complement clauses (e.g., Beatrix wants a frisbee or Beatrix is looking for Polly). We discuss the implications of such sentences for the status of intensionality in grammar.