expressionhave

Expressionhave is a hypothetical discourse-analytic concept used in speculative linguistics and worldbuilding to describe a marker that signals the speaker’s expressive stance toward the proposition of a clause. The term combines “expression” with “have” to indicate a role as a stance-encoding element that may accompany the finite verb, signaling attitudes such as surprise, doubt, or emphasis. It is not an established grammatical category in any natural language and is used here as a thought experiment to illustrate how stance, evidentiality, and clause structure could interact.

Usage and syntax. In discussions of expressionhave, the marker is treated as a fixed, parenthetical element or as a light preposed tag. As a parenthetical, it can appear between subject and predicate: The results, expressionhave, are inconclusive. It can also appear as a sentence-internal tag: The method expressionhave seems robust under these conditions. In both positions, the goal is to foreground the speaker’s attitude toward the proposition without changing the core argument structure.

Semantics and relation to other devices. Expressionhave is intended to convey an evaluative or affective stance rather than lexical meaning alone. Depending on context, it could express skepticism, confidence, irony, or surprise. In theory, variants such as expressionhave-surprised or expressionhave-confident could extend the system. The concept situates itself near other discourse and stance markers and distinct from evidentials or modal auxiliaries, though it is not attested in real languages.

Status. Expressionhave remains a fictional or experimental construct rather than a proven linguistic category. It is cited here to explore how discourse marking could interact with tense, aspect, and evidential readings in clause structure.