Subsentential speech acts, the argument from connectivity, and situated contextualism

The most commonly given examples of subsentential speech acts are expressions such as “Nice dress”, “From Spain”, “Where?”, etc., uttered in such circumstances that the speakers uttering them are regarded as “making moves in a language game”, e.g., stating, asking, promising, etc. The argument from connectivity is one of the most important arguments for the claim that such utterances - contrary to appearances - are in fact ellipses, i.e. sentential speech acts. The argument uses examples from inflectional languages, such as Polish or German, in which allegedly subsentential speech acts (e.g. “Obiema rękami” (Both hands. INS), said by a father to his little daughter drinking chocolate milk from a glass) appear in cases other than the nominative. Those who think that they are just fragments of longer unpronounced sentences have no problem in explaining where the case comes from, but the answer is more problematic for those who think that such utterances are truly subsentential. In this chapter, I argue that this argument is by no means conclusive and that the defenders of subsentential speech acts need not be worried by connectivity effects. I suggest a situated contextualist account of such acts, which is based on Recanati’s moderate relativism (see Recanati 2008), on which connectivity can be explained. However, pace Recanati and following Perry (1986), I argue that, at least in the case of subsentential speech acts, we have to postulate unarticulated constituents in explicit contents as well as in situations of evaluation. The explanation of connectivity effects appeals to Perry’s (1986) idea of the utterance completing the thought whose other constituents are already in a given situation. Speakers use cases other than the nominative in order to simplify the process of enrichment for the hearers. The cases make it easier to determine which completion of the articulated content is the intended one.