The author begins this chapter with an account of how linguistic expressions, and in particular, mental ‘I’-ascriptions, could acquire an expressive role similar to the role played by natural expressions, despite the dissimilarities between avowals and natural expressions. This is done by explaining how mental self-ascriptions could emerge in the order of acquisition. In addition, the last part of the chapter answers the question how avowals are truth-evaluable (despite their similarity with non-truth-evaluable natural expressions), and how avowals are governed by a special presumption of truth.
Keywords: expressive behaviour, language acquisition, self-ascriptions, truth,