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Propositional attitude

SEMANTICS: the cognitive or emotional attitude towards a proposition, which is expressed by a verb or adjective, like know, believe, hope, fear, etc. Propositional attitude verbs create opaque contexts. Indefinite noun phrases in such a context are ambiguous between a de re and de dicto reading:

(i) The farmer believes that a witch blighted his donkey
The farmer either has a de re belief about a specific witch which he holds responsible for blighting his donkey or he has a de dicto belief that some unidentified witch did this.
LIT. Gamut, L.T.F. (1991)