noun
- statements or utterances that describe facts or states of affairs and can be evaluated as true or false
Usage: linguistics; philosophy of language
Examples
- The philosopher distinguished between constatives and performatives in speech act theory.
- Constatives like ‘The cat is on the mat’ can be verified as true or false.
- In linguistics class, we studied how constatives differ from commands or promises.
- Austin’s theory categorized utterances as either constatives or performatives.
- The sentence ‘It is raining’ is a typical example of constatives.
- Constatives are evaluated based on their correspondence to reality.