A Linguistic Framework for Knowledge, Belief, and Veridicality Judgment

By Anastasia Giannakidou, Alda Mari. 2021

In this essay, we approach the question of language, thought, and reality by studying how grammar and the lexicon encode our relation to the world (veridicality). We will address the fundamental categories of knowledge and belief and focus on specific grammatical devices such as mood morphemes (subjunctive and indicative), attitude verbs of knowledge and belief, and expressions of possibility and necessity such as modal verbs (must, may, will, might). What is the function of these expressions? How much do they tell us about the nature of knowing and believing? What are the factors that play a role in belief formation?

Subfields: Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics & Semantics

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Citations in the corpus

Do Language Models Have Beliefs? Methods for Detecting, Updating, and Visualizing Model Beliefs (2021, background): “These utterances take what is called a veridical stance toward a proposition, displaying a “full commitment" to that proposition’s truthfulness (Giannakidou and Mari, 2020).”