In this talk we pose the question of the strength of belief and the relation between belief and assertion from the standpoint of mood shift under belief in Italian and cross-linguistically.In the linguistic literature belief is considered strong (and specifically using a homogeneous doxastic modal base; Giannakidou, 1999; Farkas, 2003; Anand and Hacquard, 2013). It is also considered to be an indicative selector as subjunctive is sensitive to non-homogeneity of the modal base. Italian is a notorious exception to this cross-linguistic generalization and allows both indicative and subjunctive (which is the default).

We propose novel data, showing that subjunctive is licensed only in contexts where the prejacent (p) can be known. Indicative is instead felicitous when p can not be known. By developing our initial proposal in Mari (2015), we consider the constraint on the knowability of p as indication that mood is sensitive to the status of QUD in discourse and mediates the relation between the private space (the credence) and the public space (the context set).

In our analysis belief conveys full credence and mood is in charge of indicating how full credence of the assessor relates to other participants credences. Specifically indicative indicates lack of update of the public space (via disjointedness of the private and public spaces) and subjunctive only partial update of  the public space (via partial overlap of the public and private space, and non-homogeneity in the public space). Our analysis extends to fictional predicates and to find that in Italian and cross-linguistically.

By disentangling private and public spaces, we argue that belief is both strong in the private space and weak in the public space, and, in this respect, it is weaker than assertion.

References

Anand, Prnav & Valentine Hacquard. 2013. Epistemics and attitudes. Semantics and Pragmatics 6. 1–59.

Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1999. Affective dependencies. Linguistics and Philosophy 22(4). 367–421.

Farkas, Donka. 2003. Assertion, belief and mood choice. Talk presented at ESSLLI, Vienna.

Mari, Alda (2015). Epistemic attitudes, consensus and truth. Talk presented at the Linguistic Colloquium, Chicago, April 25th, 2015.