[Lingtyp] What is propositional content?

Sat Oct 25 12:15:52 UTC 2025

Dear Vladimir, Alex, and all others,

I think a logician would say that a sentence with “a modal comment” like (1) in Alex’s posting contains not one proposition but two: (i) the proposition that the supermarket is open on Sundays, (ii) the proposition that (i) might be true. Both (i) and (ii) are entities that can be true or false. But this means that the propositional content of (1) is (ii) rather than (i), since that is what is expressed by the whole sentence and what the speaker claims is true.

There is a tradition in linguistics to do things the way Alex proposes. I don’t know where it originally came from, but Fillmore in his 1968 paper “The Case for Case” divides the basic structure of sentence into a “proposition” and a “modality constituent”. The difference between logicians and linguists may be that logicians tend to think of modal notions as objective while linguists regard them as subjective. The problem is that modalities may differ in this regard. This could be a long discussion, but I will stop here.

Best,
Östen

Från: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> För Alex Francois via Lingtyp
Skickat: den 25 oktober 2025 13:16
Till: Vladimir Panov <panovmeister at gmail.com>
Kopia: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] What is propositional content?

Dear Vladimir,

Thanks for an interesting question.

In my understanding, the notion of "propositional content" stems from the logical analysis of language. It reflects the attempt to isolate, in an utterance, the reported state-of-affairs from what the speaker says about it.
Thus if I say (1) The supermarket might even be open on Sundays, one can propose to mentally separate:

  *   the propositional content X:
<the supermarket being open on Sundays>
  *   the modal comment about that content X:
<X might be true> = <it is possible for X to be true>
Now if we compare (1) with
(2) There is no way the supermarket would be open on Sundays,
we may say that both utterances share the exact same propositional content X, but they include a different modal stance about it.
In the case of (2), the modal comment would be <there's no way that X is true> = <it is necessary for X to be false>.
________
The first author, I believe, to have formalised similar concepts is Thomas Aquinas ~ Tommaso d'Aquino (13th century), in his short De propositionibus modalibus ['On modal propositions'] (which might be apocryphal).  I found the original text here<https://www.corpusthomisticum.org/dpp.html> in Latin;  a French translation here<http://docteurangelique.free.fr/bibliotheque/opuscules/39lespropositionsmodales.htm>; Uckelman (2009: 157-9)<https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/eprint/2074/1/DS-2009-04.text.pdf#page=173> has an English translation.

Aquinas contrasted the dictum ["what is said" ≈propositional content]
from the modus [the 'manner', i.e. what is said about the dictum]. His examples included:
(3) Necesse est Socratem currere. “For Socrates to run is necessarily true.”
(4) Possibile est Socratem currere. “For Socrates to run is possible.”,
etc.

In a passage which I find incredibly modern, Aquinas notes that polarity can affect sometimes the dictum, sometimes the modus:
In (5) Possibile est Socratem non currere “It is possible for Socrates not to run”, the negation is internal to the dictum.
In (6) Non possibile est Socratem currere “It is not possible for Socrates to run”, the negation is a property of the modus.

(Orig. quote: Item sciendum est quod propositio modalis dicitur affirmativa vel negativa secundum affirmationem vel negationem modi, et non dicti. which could be rendered: "Importantly, the modality will be said affirmative vs. negative depending on the polarity of the modus, not of the dictum.")
________
Aquinas' proposals have played a major role in formal logic;
they were also introduced to linguistics by French linguist Charles Bally in 1932 (cf. Gosselin 2015<https://hal.science/hal-02310043v1/>).

The word modus is the source of our later concepts of mood and modality.
________
I just found an interesting paper by Per Martin-Löf “Are the objects of propositional attitudes propositions in the sense of propositional and predicate logic?” (2003<https://pml.flu.cas.cz/uploads/PML-Geneva19Dec03.pdf>) In this table, he compares Bally's contrast modus vs. dictum [actually from Aquinas] with proposals by other logicians and linguists:
[cid:image001.png at 01DC45B5.F19F5360]

Löf here proposes that the term “propositional content” was mostly used by John Searle. I guess this refers to Searle's 1969 Speech acts, though Löf does not elaborate.
Admittedly, "illocutionary force" is different from "modus", but there is indeed a filiation across these different notional couples.
Other people on this list will be able to point to specific passages in Searle's works.
_______
Finally, another attempt to adapt similar ideas to linguistics was Simon Dik's Functional grammar:
Dik, Simon. (1989). The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part I: The Structure of the Clause (Vol. 9). Foris.

At first glance, Dik's equivalent to the dictum is what he calls the "state of affairs" (SoA), which he defines p.51:
[cid:image002.png at 01DC45B5.F19F5360]

That said, Dik is worth reading because, rather than a mere binary contrast (such as dictum vs. modus) he proposes to distinguish different logical / semantic levels of the utterance, organised in a fine-grained hierarchy (see his p.50):
[cid:image003.png at 01DC45B5.F19F5360]
Dik carefully distinguishes between SoA, possible fact, predication, proposition, clause...
Different operators π (e.g. Tense, Aspect, Modality, Polarity, Truth value, Illocutionary act...), and also what he calls "satellites" σ (syntactic adjuncts etc), attach to different layers among these.
Interestingly, Dik describes one of his layers as “propositional content”, which he equates with “possible fact” (p.52):
[cid:image004.png at 01DC45B5.F19F5360]

See also pp.294 ff.
Dik's concept of prop. content is more specific than the same term used by Searle or the dictum of other authors;
In his terms, propositional content is of a "higher-order structure" than the core state-of-affairs.
________
In my publications describing the Oceanic languages of northern Vanuatu, I have found such analytical tools (under the same or similar names) quite useful, particularly when describing tense, aspect, modality or illocutionary force in different languages -- whether TAMP in Mwotlap (2003<https://marama.huma-num.fr/AFpub_books_e.htm#hide3:~:text=La%20S%C3%A9mantique%20du%20Pr%C3%A9dicat%20en%20Mwotlap>, f/c c<https://marama.huma-num.fr/AFpub_articles_e.htm#fcc>), the Aorist in NV languages (2009a<https://marama.huma-num.fr/AFpub_articles_e.htm#2009a>), the Subjunctive in Hiw & Lo-Toga (2010b<https://marama.huma-num.fr/AFpub_articles_e.htm#2010b>), etc.
________

I hope this is useful.

best
Alex
________________________________

Alex François
LaTTiCe<http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/> — CNRS<https://www.cnrs.fr/en> —<https://www.cnrs.fr/en> ENS<https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094>–PSL<https://www.psl.eu/en> — Sorbonne nouvelle<http://www.sorbonne-nouvelle.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
Australian National University<https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/persons/alex-francois>
Personal homepage<http://alex.francois.online.fr/>
_________________________________________

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Vladimir Panov via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2025 at 03:00
Subject: [Lingtyp] What is propositional content?
To: <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>>

Dear typologists,

In various traditions of linguistics, both "formal" and "functional", there is a habit to speak of "propositional content". I have a feeling that this term is very difficult to define, especially if one takes cross-linguistic variation seriously. In practice, many linguistis tend to use the term as if the reader knew exactly what it means. Needles to say, the term has a long and complex history.

Are you aware of any relatively up-to-date and possibly typllogy-friendly literature which discusses this problem?

Thank you,
Vladimir
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20251025/975e9464/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 61337 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20251025/975e9464/attachment-0004.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.png
Type: image/png
Size: 446345 bytes
Desc: image002.png
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20251025/975e9464/attachment-0005.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.png
Type: image/png
Size: 159499 bytes
Desc: image003.png
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20251025/975e9464/attachment-0006.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.png
Type: image/png
Size: 300071 bytes
Desc: image004.png
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20251025/975e9464/attachment-0007.png>