The Factive-Reported Distinction in English

Constructions of speech and thought representation

“…While “thought” seems an obvious addition, it does not tell the whole story, in that other types of “mental” content like feelings, attitudes, hopes and even, to a degree, perceptions can reasonably be included too, on the grounds that they can appear in similar constructions and have related meanings: consider, in this connection, the possible use of reporting clauses like she felt, he believed, they hope, I hear (you've been promoted) (compare people tell me you've been promoted ), I see (that you're right) (compare I think/understand that you're right ). The area of clausal complementation involving different types of verbal, mental and related meanings is a vast and complex one that cannot be summarized here (see, e.g., Halliday, 1985; Noonan, 1985; Davidse, 1999; McGregor, 2008; Gentens, 2020), but it is clear that much is possible beyond strictly “saying” and “thinking.” Semino and Short (2004) explicitly included writing, too, as in Eliot wrote that he'd soon return , though they also note that writing is quite close to speech: indeed, in the terms used in Relevance Theory (e.g., Carston, 1999; Iwata, 2003), both spoken and written utterances are publicly accessible whereas thoughts are not. As is well known, more “colorful” verbs are sometimes used which do not even seem fully verbal or mental; of particular interest is the group of so‐called behavioral verbs (intransitive in grammar and partly physical, partly psychological in meaning), proposed in Halliday (1985), exemplified by smile, frown , or sob (e.g., “Yes,” she sobbed ).…”

“…An example such as he accepted that he had been wrong has a different structure compared to he said that he had been wrong ; to cite just one indication of this, the latter but not the former allows substitution by the clausal substitute so (Halliday & Hasan, 1976): he said so but not *he accepted so . An in‐depth investigation of the factive‐reported distinction from a cognitive‐functional perspective is presented in Gentens (2020). Another set of constructions with a different structural analysis than one of interclausal complementation concerns subjective uses of clauses like I think , discussed briefly in Box 2.…”