Attitude Problems An Essay on Linguistic Intensionality

Attitude Problems investigates the logic and semantics of intensional transitive verbs, including search verbs such as 'seek', 'hunt', 'look (for)'; requirement verbs such as 'need', 'demand', 'cry out (for)'; transaction verbs such as 'order', 'owe', 'wager'; and depiction verbs such as 'sketch', 'draw', 'sculpt', 'portray'. It focuses mainly on those intensional transitives which can give rise to notional (unspecific, no-particular) readings, as in, for example, 'the police are looking for everyone who witnessed the incident', which is not usually understood to mean that there are specific people they are looking for. Graeme Forbes develops a broadly Montagovian account of notionality, in opposition to a Quinean or 'propositionalist' account, which assimilates intensional transitives to propositional attitude verbs. He argues that the best version of a Montagovian approach is one which is set within a neo-Davidsonian event-based semantics. The topics discussed include compositionality, existence, valid inference forms, disjunctive noun-phrases, creation verbs in the progressive, the definiteness effect with depiction verbs, and substitution-failure in simple sentences. The results support the view that the semantic devices that make notional readings possible are quite different from the ones that generate substitution-failure. Book jacket.