Manfred Krifka (2024), Synthese 203, article 31 (31 pp.), open access — DOI-10.1007/s11229-023-04359-0
Key takeaways
- Two kinds of update. Informative update restricts a context set c to the indices where φ holds, c + inform(φ) = {i ∈ c | φ(i)}, always a subset of c and empty if φ is not a live option. Performative update replaces each index by its minimal φ-changed successor, c + perform(φ) = {i′ | ∃i ∈ c, i′ ∈ i + φ}, which is not in general a subset of c and is typically applied when φ is false throughout c. The difference is Searle’s direction of fit, made formal.
- Index change is coherent. Szabolcsi’s functional version (the unique later index differing only in φ) fails for simultaneous independent changes and for disjunctive φ. Krifka places it in branching time, with the changed index starting a new, cotemporaneous history, and adopts a relational version (a set of minimally different indices), parallel to Lewis’s counterfactuals against Stalnaker’s.
- Declarations versus assertions. A declaration is [ActP · TP]: the performative operator applied to a proposition, defined only where the speaker has the authority. An assertion is [ActP · [ComP ⊢ TP]]: a performative update making it true that the speaker guarantees φ (the illocutionary act, which the addressee cannot reject, only ask to be withdrawn), followed by an informative update with φ (the primary perlocutionary act, which the addressee can refuse). The same sentence, citizens can apply for travel abroad, can be either; evidence that declarations lack the commitment layer is that they reject certainly, apparently, and cannot answer questions.
- Every speech act is performative. Commissives create a speaker obligation, imperatives an addressee obligation, exclamatives and optatives display an attitude rather than vouch for it, definitions and let x be prime impose a fact, and “proxitives” (grins, lol) stand in for an act. The locutionary act is itself a sequence of index changes, and the illocutionary change happens at its end; hereby marks that the host proposition becomes true through the utterance, which is why it never occurs with assertions.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-09 at the owner’s request from the manuscript
bibliography of 2026-10-09 (work what-survives-translation), which
considered this paper and dropped it from the final reference list. See
the curation entry of that day.
Read on 2026-10-09 (NOTE-602). It is the record’s only formal account of speech acts. Its two named predecessors are filed beside it: Stalnaker’s “Assertion” (LIT-811), whose context-set update is the informative half, and Searle’s Speech Acts (LIT-826), whose F(p) form the operator · instantiates. Austin’s lectures (LIT-785) are the source of the constative/performative distinction it formalises.
With the Heim and Veltman readings of the same day it is a source of THEORY-162.