Attitude reports without complementation: The case of Amahuaca

Abstract

Classic analyses of propositional attitude reports assume that attitude verbs compose with a clausal argument that expresses a proposition. I use original fieldwork data to demonstrate that Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) attitude reports involve high adjunct switch-reference clauses rather than clausal complements to an attitude verb. This structure raises issues for the traditionally assumed compositional semantics of attitude reports. I present two potential analyses that do not require the verb to compose directly with a complement CP, ultimately arguing in favor of an analysis that aligns with proposals by Kratzer (2006) and Moulton (2015) that the internal arguments of attitude verbs are individuals with propositional content. Amahuaca therefore provides novel empirical support for this approach to the semantics of attitude reports.