The “one-commitment-per-clause” principle and the cognitive status of qualificational categories

Combinations of performative deontic, epistemic and evidential expressions in a clause appear to be very rare in language. This article presents facts to this effect on the basis of Dutch corpus data, and attempts to explain them. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of the cognitive status of the semantic notions involved, and more generally of the phenomenon called “tense-aspect-modality marking” or the “qualification of states of affairs” in language. In particular, the aim is to contribute to current theorizing on the hierarchical nature of qualifications and the position of this hierarchical system in a cognitive language model.