“The natural use of Truth in interaction”

Event Date: 

Friday, January 28, 2022 - 1:30pm

Event Location: 

  • https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/9851117049

In this talk I will explore the natural use of Truth in interaction through the stance-taking act of predicating true. I will first introduce the two uses of true proposed in the literature: the descriptive use and the performatory use. I will examine the scope and the discourse profile, i.e., the linguistic environment, for each of these uses. I will then turn to explore the relationship between the two functional uses of true described above. I will do this by presenting two sources of evidence attesting to this relationship: cross linguistic patterns for mapping true’s functions and the diachronic development of agreement markers from truth predicates. I will then frame true in two different interactional frameworks: One that supports a distinction between the two uses of true, and another that obscures the difference between the two uses of true. I will show the advantage of the former with respect to framing true in natural interaction. Finally, I will discuss implications for the framing of true in this framework.