What's wrong with believing whether

Authors

  • Nadine Theiler University of Amsterdam
  • Floris Roelofsen University of Amsterdam
  • Maria Aloni University of Amsterdam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v27i0.4125

Abstract

It is a long-standing puzzle why verbs like believe and think take declarative but not interrogative complements (e.g., *Bill believes whether Mary left), while closely related verbs like know and be certain take both kinds of complements. We show that this contrast can be derived from the fact that believe and think, unlike know and be certain, are neg-raising verbs.

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Published

2017-12-06

Issue

Proceedings of SALT 27

Section

Articles

License

Articles appearing in SALT are published under an author agreement with the Linguistic Society of America and are made available to readers under a Creative Commons Attribution License.