ABSTRACT
Performative paradigms can be envisaged as remedying a morphological deficiency in the inflexion of the verb as we observe it in a language such as English. The difficulty is that for most OP verbs in English the performative paradigm would have to be regarded as composed exclusively of forms isomorphic with some Active or Passive form in the Present Indicative. Formal resemblance, as between Latin ambulat and ambulavisset, is not, alone, sufficient. There is also a semantic criterion which relates to the meaning of the word-form. Warnock's case against Hare relies in part on the assumption that there is no difference of meaning between the verb promise as used in performative contexts and promise as used in non-performative contexts. An utterance of the form I apologize, may be suspected that this line of argument does some violence to the intentions behind the conditions proposed by Austin, Chishol.
