ABSTRACT
Even for those parameters that have antecedents in the theory of Speech Acts, the determination of the particular values that are allowed seems to me to be a highly arbitrary matter. For example, on the dimension of illocutionary point, which Searle thinks is the single most important, we find five values: the assertive point, the directive point, the commissive point, the expressive point, and the misleadingly named point of declarations, called elsewhere the declarative point. Why we find exactly these points, and not, say, a precative point (for cursing), a lamentative point (for complaints), a suppositive point (for supposing), and so on, I do not know. True, such acts as cursing and supposing seem less mundane, less basic than the five that Searle postulates, but how does Searle know which ones are primitive?
