Another look at contrafactive predicates: The case of Spanish 'creerse'

Abstract

Verbs that presuppose the falsehood of their complement are rare in natural language. Anvari et al. (2019) suggest that Spanish contains one such “contrafactive predicate,” creerse, formed from creer (‘believe’) and the reflexive pronoun. We examine the behavior of creerse under negation, where the mood of the complement affects the inferences that get drawn, in complicated ways. We propose an account on which the aspects of meaning that go beyond simple belief trace back to elements beyond the basic belief predicate creer. Our account is linked to a particular view of mood alternation in negative contexts.