Evaluative Sentences and Assertorical Commitments

Sentences with evaluative predicates are sensitive to the valuation carried on under an evaluative parameter in the context. Two theories have provided an account for this kind of context-sensitivity: (indexical and non-indexical) contextualism and assessment relativism. In this paper I will present a third alternative that achieves the same results in a simpler way. This theory is based on two main ideas: understanding the content expressed on the basis of an articulation of the evaluative parameter as a dyadic function, and the practical and linguistic commitments that the assertion of these sentences imposes over speakers and hearers. Both tools will result in a theory that can manage agreements, disagreements and echoic uses of evaluative sentences without the need to supplement the standard semantic theory with contexts of assessment or with presuppositions of commonality of the evaluative standard.