The inference
CLAIM-151 grounds on CASE-018’s sentence, “You blow it all on sex and booze”, said by a friend, a parent, a judge and a comedian. The act changes as the speaker’s relation to the hearer changes, so those relations are constituents of the act.
Critical questions
- Would the evidence be expected if the hypothesis were false? Yes. A rival that individuates acts by the utterance token plus the speaker’s states would describe the four speakers the same way, because the readings were assigned, not measured.
- Does it tell the hypothesis apart from its rivals? No. CLAIM-229: CLAIM-151’s defeat condition “is met if a rival account ‘would predict the CASE-018 variation as well’. The CASE-018 variation is A12’s, A18’s and A24’s description of four imagined speakers. It is not an observation, so there is nothing yet for a rival to predict.”
- Does the measure measure what it is said to? No. This is the question that fails. CASE-018: “Invented, so it shows a possibility”. The thesis needs more than the possibility.
Rejected as evidence for CLAIM-151. CLAIM-151’s version 2 (2026-10-10) took the point: its defeat condition was restated “on cases with intention held fixed”, and no longer asks a rival to predict CASE-018. Its grounds now also hold CASE-069, Labov’s recorded sounding sessions, which is documented rather than invented.