An investigation on the semantic and pragmatic features of English verbs of cognitive attitude.
English verbs of cognitive attitude are one of the means of giving voice to the subject’s epistemic-evidential stance. The interest aroused by these verbs is not limited to their semantics: it also lies in their functions in communication and, supposedly, in cognition. This book investigates the semantic and pragmatic features of this class of English verbs in the light of recent theories of dynamic meaning construal and analyses it as a good example of a complex dynamical system within which a number of micro-systems, i.e. the individual verbs, are embedded and occupy a rich semantic space in which epistemicity and evidentiality interact in intricate ways.