What's wrong with believing whether?

Open Access
Authors
Publication date 2017
Journal Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory
Event Semantics and Linguistic Theory 27, 2017
Volume | Issue number 27
Pages (from-to) 248-265
Organisations
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI)
  • Interfacultary Research - Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)
Abstract It is a long-standing puzzle why verbs like believe and think take declarative but not interrogative complements (e.g., *Bill believes whether Mary left), while closely related verbs like know and be certain take both kinds of complements. We show that this contrast can be derived from the fact that believe and think, unlike know and be certain, are neg-raising verbs. 
Document type Article
Note Proceedings of the 27th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, held at the University of Maryland, College Park May 12-14, 2017, edited by Dan Burgdorf, Jacob Collard, Sireemas Maspong, and Brynhildur Stefánsdóttir.
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v27i0.4125
Downloads
4125-6076-1-PB (Final published version)
Permalink to this page
Back