Vivid attitudes: Centered situations in the semantics of 'remember' and 'imagine'

This paper deals with a subset of uses of propositional attitude predicates such as 'remember' and 'imagine.' I argue that these have a distinct "vivid" reading, which requires direct witnessing or sensory perception similar to that required in direct perception reports. To account for this use, I introduce a notion of centered situations, combining situations in the sense of Kratzer (1989) with centered worlds in the sense of Lewis (1979) and others. I propose that, on their vivid uses, these predicates make reference to a (real or possible) centered situation. This makes it possible in particular to account for attitude reports that are simultaneously vivid and obligatorily 'de se.'

Vivid attitudes: Centered situations in the semantics of 'remember' and 'imagine'

This paper deals with a subset of uses of propositional attitude predicates such as 'remember' and 'imagine.' I argue that these have a distinct "vivid" reading, which requires direct witnessing or sensory perception similar to that required in direct perception reports. To account for this use, I introduce a notion of centered situations, combining situations in the sense of Kratzer (1989) with centered worlds in the sense of Lewis (1979) and others. I propose that, on their vivid uses, these predicates make reference to a (real or possible) centered situation. This makes it possible in particular to account for attitude reports that are simultaneously vivid and obligatorily 'de se.'

Temporal and propositional de se: evidence from Romanian subjunctive mood

The paper investigates the interpretation of the Romanian subjunctive B (subjB) mood when it is embedded under the propositional attitude verb crede (believe). SubjB is analyzed as a single package of three distinct presuppositions: temporal de se, dissociation and propositional de se. I show that subjB is the temporal analogue of null PRO in the individual domain: it allows only for a de se reading. Dissociation enables us to show that subjB always takes scope over a negation embedded in a belief report. Propositional de se derives this empirical generalization. The introduction of centered propositions (generalizing centered worlds), together with propositional de se, dissociation and the belief 'introspection' principles, derives the fact that subjB belief reports (unlike their indicative counterparts) are infelicitous with embedded probabil.