[Lingtyp] What is propositional content?

Sat Oct 25 14:42:01 UTC 2025

Dear All,
just a small comment on Östen’s and Jürgen’s remarks. Don’t they lead to the conclusion that propositional content is recursive (just like embedding may be recursive)? That is, there is, then, a theoretically infinite inclusion of propositions in propositions (as “objects” of mental acts, and of speech acts reporting on mental acts):

  1.  It is probable [that it is likely [that x said [that presumably [y claimed [that … ]]]]]

I wonder whether the same could be done with illocutionary force. I guess that it cannot. And if not I wonder why this might be so.
               Does anybody know why this might be so?

Best,
Björn.

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> On Behalf Of Juergen Bohnemeyer via Lingtyp
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2025 4:25 PM
To: Östen Dahl <oesten at ling.su.se>; Alex Francois <alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com>; Vladimir Panov <panovmeister at gmail.com>
Cc: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] What is propositional content?

Dear all — I had the same reaction as Östen - for me, the meaning of modal operators is also ‘propositional’, although it is of course distinct from that of their prejacent propositions.

So what, then, is propositional content (if anything)? I think the term has its uses primarily in contexts in which we contrast meanings that can be spelled out in terms of propositions (i.e., representations of states of affairs that can be true or false and may be objects of propositional attitudes such as belief and doubt) against meanings that cannot be spelled out in this manner.

Take the meaning of color terms. According to the theory of color semantics developed by Paul Kay and collaborators, the literal meaning (as opposed to associated metaphors) of the word green is a sensory quality with a prototype ('focal green’) that is neurophysiologically encoded. We can certainly express propositions about green things, and even focal green (I just did) - but these propositions can never accurately capture or define the meaning of green.

Now, some are strongly invested in the view that all meaning is propositional content. Perhaps the most prominent scholar of this persuasion is Anna Wierzbicka. Here is Wierzbicka’s (1996: 306) analysis of green:

 X is green. =
    in some places many things grow out of the ground
    when one sees things like X one can think of this.

I think everybody can judge for themselves whether they find this analysis convincing.

In my view, there is quite a range of linguistic meanings that cannot adequately be captured in propositional terms. Aside from color terms and other expressions of sensory perception, I would add for example ideophones (not necessarily all of them, especially not when you take ‘ideophone’ as the label of a language-specific category of expressions), expressives, honorifics and other social deictics, and so on. I would go as far as to suggest that even manner of motion verbs such as walk and run have meanings that we understand because our motor system knows how to engage in these activities, not because we can define them propositionally.

Where to draw the boundary between propositional and non-propositional content has long been a fascinating question to me. There’s much more I could say about this, but I’ll stop here as I’m sure people have stopped reading a while ago 😉

Best — Juergen

Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Östen Dahl via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Date: Saturday, October 25, 2025 at 09:26
To: Alex Francois <alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com<mailto:alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com>>, Vladimir Panov <panovmeister at gmail.com<mailto:panovmeister at gmail.com>>
Cc: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org> <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] What is propositional content?
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<mailto: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<mailto:panovmeister at gmail.com>>
Kopia: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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 01DC45CD.F63F5470]

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 01DC45CD.F63F5470]

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 01DC45CD.F63F5470]
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 01DC45CD.F63F5470]

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
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