The semantics of attitude markers and other illocutionary content

Intuitively, attitude markers like alas encode not-at-issue information about the speaker’s attitude towards the content of the sentence it occurs in (Frege, 1956; Vanderveken, 1990). Using attitude markers as a case study, I argue that there is in fact a difference between this type of content and canonical not-at-issue content, like that encoded in utterance modifiers like frankly or evidential adverbs like apparently. In contrast to the latter, attitude markers are only compatible with declarative mood; are uniquely restricted in terms of the content they apply to; and can result in Moore’s Paradox. I conclude that the contribution of attitude markers should thus be treated as ‘illocutionary content’, on par with the sincerity conditions encoded in illocutionary mood. I present a formal analysis of illocutionary content in which it differs from other not-at-issue content in restricting the speaker’s Discourse Commitments (Gunlogson, 2001) rather than the Common Ground.