Default agreement with subjective assertions

Abstract

This paper puts forward a formal proposal for a judge-dependent notion of assertion that derives asymmetries in the discourse profile of subjective and objective assertions while preserving a unary illocutionary profile for utterances of declarative sentences. We propose that when a speaker asserts a sentence, they commit to that sentence being true as judged by themself, but project acceptance of the truth of that sentence as judged by all interlocutors. This account makes different predictions, then, for assertions of declarative sentences with judge-invariant denotations, and assertions of declarative sentences with judge-variant denotations.