Veridicality

In linguistics, veridicality (from Latin "truthfully said") is a semantic or grammatical assertion of the truth of an utterance.

Definition

Merriam-Webster defines "veridical" as truthful, veracious and non illusory. It stems from the Latin "veridicus", composed of Latin ''verus'', meaning "true", and ''dicere'', which means "to say".
For example, the statement "Paul saw a snake" asserts belief in the claim, while "Paul ''did'' see a snake" is an even stronger assertion of a correct basis for that belief (he perceived an object, believed it to be a snake, and it was in fact a snake).

The formal definition of veridicality views the context as a propositional operator (Giannakidou 1998).

# A propositional operator ''F'' is veridical iff ''Fp'' entails ''p'', that is, ''Fp'' → ''p''; otherwise ''F'' is nonveridical.
# Additionally, a nonveridical operator ''F'' is antiveridical iff ''Fp'' entails ''not p'', that is, ''Fp'' → ¬''p''.

For temporal and aspectual operators, the definition of veridicality is somewhat more complex:

* For operators relative to instants of time: Let ''F'' be a temporal or aspectual operator, and ''t'' an instant of time.
*# ''F'' is veridical iff for ''Fp'' to be true at time ''t'', ''p'' must be true at a (contextually relevant) time ' ≤ ''t''; otherwise ''F'' is nonveridical.
*# A nonveridical operator ''F'' is antiveridical iff for ''Fp'' to be true at time ''t'', ¬''p'' must be true at a (contextually relevant) time ' ≤ ''t''.
* For operators relative to intervals of time: Let ''F'' be a temporal or aspectual operator, and ''t'' an interval of time.
*# ''F'' is veridical iff for ''Fp'' to be true of ''t'', ''p'' must be true of all (contextually relevant) ' ⊆ ''t''; otherwise ''F'' is nonveridical.
*# A nonveridical operator ''F'' is antiveridical iff for ''Fp'' to be true of ''t'', ¬''p'' must be true of all (contextually relevant) ' ⊆ ''t''.

Nonveridical operators

Negation is veridical, though of opposite polarity, sometimes called ''antiveridical'': "Paul didn't see a snake" asserts that the statement "Paul saw a snake" is false. In English, non-indicative moods or irrealis moods are frequently used in a nonveridical sense: "Paul may have seen a snake" and "Paul would have seen a snake" do not assert that Paul actually saw a snake and the second implies that he did not. "Paul would indeed have seen a snake" is veridical, and some languages have separate veridical conditional moods for such cases.

Nonveridicality has been proposed to be behind the licensing of polarity items such as the English words ''any'' and ''ever,'' as an alternative to the influential downward entailment theory (see below) proposed by Ladusaw (1980). Anastasia Giannakidou (1998) argued that various polarity phenomena observed in language are manifestations of the dependency of polarity items to the (non)veridicality of the context of appearance. The (non)veridical dependency may be positive (licensing), or negative (anti-licensing), and arises from the sensitivity semantics of polarity items. Across languages, different polarity items may show sensitivity to veridicality, anti-veridicality, or non-veridicality.

Nonveridical operators typically license the use of ''polarity items'', which in veridical contexts normally is ungrammatical:

: * Mary saw ''any'' students. (The context is veridical.)
: Mary didn't see ''any'' students. (The context is nonveridical.)

Downward entailment

All downward entailing contexts are nonveridical. Because of this, theories based on nonveridicality can be seen as extending those based on downward entailment, allowing more cases of polarity item licensing to be explained.

Downward entailment predicts that polarity items will be licensed in the scope of negation, downward entailing quantifiers like ''few N'', ''at most n N'', ''no N'', and the restriction of ''every'':

: No students saw ''anything''.
: Mary didn't see ''anything''.
: Few children saw ''anything''.
: Every student who saw ''anything'' should report to the police.

Non-monotone quantifiers

Quantifiers like ''exactly three students'', ''nobody but John'', and ''almost nobody'' are non-monotone (and thus not downward entailing) but nevertheless admit ''any'':

: % Exactly three students saw ''anything''.
: Nobody but Mary saw ''anything''.
: Almost nobody saw ''anything''.

''Hardly'' and ''barely''

''Hardly'' and ''barely'' allow for ''any'' despite not being downward entailing.

: Mary hardly talked to ''anybody''. (Does not entail "Mary hardly talked to her mother".)
: Mary barely studied ''anything''. (Does not entail "Mary barely studied linguistics".)

Questions

Polarity items are quite frequent in questions, although questions are not monotone.

: Did you see ''anything''?

Although questions biased towards the negative answer, such as "Do you ven/nowiki> give a damn about any books?" (tag questions based on negative sentences exhibit even more such bias), can sometimes be seen as downward entailing, this approach cannot account for the general case, such as the above example where the context is perfectly neutral. Neither can it explain why negative questions, which naturally tend to be biased, don't license negative polarity items.

In semantics which treats a question as the set of its true answers, the denotation of a polar question contains two possible answers:

: Did you see Mary? =

Because disjunction ''p'' ∨ ''q'' entails neither ''p'' nor ''q'', the context is nonveridical, which explains the admittance of ''any''.

Future

Polarity items appear in future sentences.

: Mary will buy ''any'' bottle of wine.
: The children will leave as soon as they discover ''anything''.

According to the formal definition of veridicality for temporal operators, future is nonveridical: that "John will buy a bottle of Merlot" is true ''now'' does not entail that "John buys a bottle of Merlot" is true at any instant up to and including ''now''. On the other hand, past is veridical: that "John bought a bottle of Merlot" is true ''now'' entails that there is an instant preceding ''now'' at which "John buys a bottle of Merlot" is true.

Habitual aspect

Likewise, nonveridicality of the habitual aspect licenses polarity items.

: He usually reads ''any'' book very carefully.

The habitual aspect is nonveridical because e.g., that "He is usually cheerful" is true over some interval of time does not entail that "He is cheerful" is true over every subinterval of that. This is in contrast to e.g., the progressive aspect, which is veridical and prohibits negative polarity items.

Generic sentences

Non-monotone generic sentences accept polarity items.

: ''Any'' cat hunts mice.

Modal verbs

Modal verbs create generally good environments for polarity items:

: Mary may talk to ''anybody''.
: ''Any'' minors must be accompanied by their parents.
: The committee can give the job to ''any'' candidate.

Such contexts are nonveridical despite being non-monotone and sometimes even upward entailing ("Mary must tango" entails "Mary must dance").

Imperatives

Imperatives are roughly parallel to modal verbs and intensional contexts in general.

: Take ''any'' apple. (cf. "You may/must take ''any'' apple", "I want you to take ''any'' apple".)

Protasis of conditionals

Protasis of conditionals is one of the most common environments for polarity items.

: If you sleep with ''anybody'', I'll kill you.

Directive intensional verbs

Polarity items are licensed with directive propositional attitudes but not with epistemic ones.

: Mary would like to invite ''any'' student.
: Mary asked us to invite ''any'' student.
: * Mary believes that we invited ''any'' student.
: * Mary dreamt that we invited ''any'' student.

References

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{{Formal semantics

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