Online Papers - Brian Weatherson

Epistemic Modals in Context 282
his Hummer H2, despite that vehicle being neither little nor friendly. No one else,
however, approves of this terminology.
(31) Arnold: My little friend could drive up Mt Everest.
Chaz: Arnold believes his little friend could drive up Mt Everest. 26
We’ve left off the punctuation here so as to not beg any questions, but there is a
way this could be an acceptable report if the fourth and fifth word, and those two
words only, are part of a quotation. This is clearly not ordinary direct quotation, for
Arnold did not think, in English or Mentalese, “His little friend could drive up Mt
Everest.” Nevertheless, this is not ordinary indirect quotation. In ordinary spoken
English Chaz’s report will be unacceptable unless ‘little friend’ is stressed. The stress
here seems to be just the same stress as is used in metalinguistic negation, as described
in Horn (1989). Note the length of the pause between ‘his’ and ‘little’. With an
ordinary pause it sounds as if Chaz is using, not mentioning, ‘little friend’. So it is
possible in principle to have belief reports, like this one, that are neither strictly direct
nor strictly indirect. 27 Nevertheless, it does not seem like (30) need such a case. In
particular, there need be no distinctive metalinguistic stress on ‘might’ in Watson’s
utterance of (30), and such stress seems to be mandatory for this mixed report.
Assuming Moriarty was speaking ordinary English, Watson’s report seems perfectly
accurate. This is despite the fact that the relevant community one would naturally
associate with Watson’s use of ‘might’ is quite different to the community we
would associate with Moriarty’s use. When reporting speeches involving epistemic
modals – and the beliefs express by sincere instances of such speeches, speakers can
simply disquote the modal terms.
As is reasonably well known, there are many terms for which this kind of disquoting
report is impermissible. In every case, Guildenstern’s report of Ophelia’s
utterance is inappropriate.
(32) Ophelia: I love Hamlet.
. . .
Guildenstern: *Ophelia thinks that I love Hamlet.
(33) Guildenstern: What think you of Lord Hamlet?
Ophelia: He is a jerk.
. . .
Rosencrantz: What does Ophelia think of the King?
Guildenstern: *She thinks that he is a jerk.
26 In this case, as with all the belief reports discussed below, the only evidence the reporter has for the
report is given by the speech immediately preceding it. We assume there is good reason from the context
to assume that the speakers are sincere.
27 There are somewhat delicate questions about what a direct belief report means, but we assume the
notion is well enough understood, even if we could not formally explicate what is going on in all such
reports.