Commitment Phrase: Linking Proposition to Illocutionary Force

This article provides empirical support for the projection of a Commitment Phrase (CommitP) in the field that maps the conversational pragmatics at the periphery of clauses. Krifka (2015, 2019, 2020) proposes CommitP as a projection that maps the speaker’s commitment to act on the proposition insofar as the speaker has evidence for the truth condition or expects the addressee to produce and commit to such evidence. CommitP replaces Ross’s (1970) idea that the speaker/addressee is related to the proposition by a speech-act predicate such as declare. Krifka argues for the alternative approach primarily on theoretical grounds. This article verifies and validates this proposal on the basis of Japanese sentence-final particles and Romanian speechact particles. We extend our analysis beyond these languages that overtly mark CommitP to English, which does not, by proposing an analysis of so-called biased questions that incorporates CommitP.