Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Csaba Czeglédi: On Constative and Performative Utterances

are different in an important sense from (1—3). While (1—3) do not have truth values, (4—5) may be true or false. ((5) is obviously false.) This was the original idea underlying the performative

—constative distinction: constative utterances do, performative utterances do not have truth values. Thus an utterance may be either performative or constative but not both. Therefore (4—5) are not performatives, since they are true

—false sensitive. But if the term constative is taken to mean 'may be true or false' and if the idea is abandoned that an utterance is either constative or performative but not both, and if we assume instead that every utterance is performative, then an utterance may be both constative and performative at the same time (cf. (4—5)). In this case, however, the original performative

—constative distinction becomes meaningless, since the socalled constative utterances are on longer in contrast with performatives, but constitute a subclass of the latter. After a careful consideration of the performative

—constative distinction several factors seem to suggest that we must take a closer look at the expression constative utterance and, particularly, we must reconsider the true

—false distinction. Only statements can be true or false. Both (4) and (5) can be true or false, therefore both are statements. The statement is a logical or clausal semantic category. (4—5) can be characterized thus: (a) they are sentences, (b) they are statements, and (c) they can be true or false. (4—5), however, are not only characterized by the properties (a

—c), but also by the properties that (d) they are utterances, and when issued as such (e) they are speech acts. The term statement, however, can be given a different interpretation. Used in the pragmatic sense, the expression may refer to the action of making a statement, i.e., to the speech act An action cannot be true or false, just as goals in football are not true or false. A goal is or is not scored. Similarly, an event may or may not have happened, an action may or may not have been performed but goals, events, and actions are neither true nor false: they do not have truth values. It is in this sense that we may say that performatives have no truth values. And constatives? They do not have truth values either. Both performatives and constatives are speech acts, and speech acts have no truth values. But if all utterances are speech acts, what 15