First saying, then believing: The pragmatic roots of folk psychology

Linguistic research has revealed several pathways of language change that may guide our understanding the evolution mental‐state attribution. In particular, it turns out that, in many languages, quotative verbs have been exapted for attributing a variety mental states, including beliefs and intentions. such literal translation of, “Betty said: ‘There will be war’”, used not only to quote Betty's words, but also convey she thought or intended there war. This paper presents model pragmatic shifts underlying this pathway, proposes an evolutionary trajectory from quotation public practice intentions, thence implicit belief/intention