Performative verb

Performative verb

Performative verbs are verbs carried out simply by means of uttering them aloud. When a judge sentences someone to jail time, for example, the action is completed when he or she says, "I hereby sentence you to five years in prison," or the like. Compare this with the sentence, "I run every day," in which the verb "run" merely "represents" the action of moving quickly.

Other examples

"We order the defendant to pay damages in the amount of $20,000.
"I move for a mistrial.
"I quit.
"I resign.

Identification

One can identify a performative verb by using the "Hereby" Test:

"I hereby confer upon you the rank of Second Lieutenant."
"I hereby promise to buy you some ice cream."

Passive

They can also occur in the passive, especially in legalese, as in

"Objection sustained." (That is, "The objection is sustained.") or
"Objection overruled.

ee also

*Performative utterance


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • performative Linguistics & Philosophy — adjective denoting a statement by means of which the speaker performs a particular act (e.g. I apologize). noun a performative verb, sentence, or utterance …   English new terms dictionary

  • Performative utterance — The notion of performative utterances was introduced by J. L. Austin. Although he had already used the term in his 1964 paper Other minds , today s usage goes back to his later, remarkedly different exposition of the notion in the 1955 William… …   Wikipedia

  • Verb — This article is about the part of speech. For the physical activity program, see VERB (program). For English usage of verbs, see English verbs. Verbs redirects here. For the Christian gospel rapper, see Verbs (rapper). Examples I washed the car… …   Wikipedia

  • Performative Spiele — Das Konzept performativer Spiele ist ein Sprachförderungsmodell für Schüler mit Migrationshintergrund. Die klassische Lehr und Lernpalette wird dabei durch Formen des performativen Spiels erweitert. Dadurch sollen nicht allein die sprachlichen,… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • performative — /pəˈfɔmətɪv/ (say puh fawmuhtiv) noun a sentence or the main verb in a sentence which performs the act indicated by virtue of being uttered, as promising or requesting, as the sentence I declare you husband and wife . {perform + ative} …  

  • Auxiliary verb — In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one… …   Wikipedia

  • Compound verb — In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi word compound that acts as a single verb. One component of the compound is a light verb or vector, which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, but provides only …   Wikipedia

  • Germanic strong verb — In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of ablaut. In English, these are verbs like sing, sang, sung. The term strong verb is a translation of German starkes Verb , which was coined by the linguist… …   Wikipedia

  • Defective verb — In linguistics, a defective verb is a verb which is missing e.g. a past tense, or cannot be used in some other way that normal verbs come. Formally, it is a verb with an incomplete conjugation. Defective verbs cannot be conjugated in certain… …   Wikipedia

  • Modal verb — A modal verb (also modal, modal auxiliary verb, modal auxiliary) is a type of auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation.[1]:p.33 The use of auxiliary verbs to express modality is… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”