A corpus study of some English verbs of attribution

With some verbs of attribution, a typical usage can be identified which indicates a particular evaluation. This typical usage can be exploited to implicate evaluation in non-typical cases, a phenomenon which is analogous to that of semantic prosody. ACKNOWLEDGE and INSIST are examples of verbs of this type. With other verbs, there is no consistently typical usage but under specifiable discourse conditions the verb does typically carry a particular evaluation. This more restricted typicality may also be exploited. CLAIM and ARGUE are examples of verbs of this type.