Collective intentionality and reciprocity

Abstract

In earlier works on the semantics of reciprocal verbs, it has often been assumed that the use of the collective guise of reciprocal verbs (e.g. “Violet and Mark hugged”) implies symmetric participation of both parties involved. However, recent work (Kruitwagen et al., 2017) suggests that this is not always the case. The use of the collective guise of reciprocal verbs is sometimes also accepted in situations of asymmetric participation and a factor that could be involved in this is collective intentionality: a shared intention, belief or emotion within the group of participants involved in the action. The experiment described in this thesis researches the role of collective intentionality on the acceptance of the use of the collective guise of reciprocal verbs in situations of asymmetric participation. This was done by collecting the truth-value judgements of Dutch speakers of sentences using such verbs in this way, based on a visually displayed situation that either involved collective intentionality or not. A positive effect of collective intentionality was found for five out of six tested verbs.