konstataativiset

Konstatatiiviset, or constatives, are a category in the philosophy of language and linguistics that describe utterances which state facts about the world. They are typically evaluated for truth or falsehood, making their content truth-conditional. The term was introduced by J. L. Austin in How to Do Things with Words as part of a contrast with performatives—the utterances that perform an action merely by being spoken (for example, I apologize, I promise).

Typical examples of konstatatiiviset are declarative statements such as It is raining, The Earth orbits the Sun, or There are seven continents. Their force lies in describing a state of affairs rather than performing an action. The truth conditions of a konstatatiivinen utterance depend on the actual state of the world, and their status can be verified or falsified empirically or by further observation. In practice, the boundary between constatives and performatives is not always sharp, and some utterances can function as both, depending on context and speaker intention.

In the history of pragmatics and semantics, the label konstatatiiviset (constatives) has become less central in favor of terms like representatives or assertives, used by Searle and others to categorize statements that convey beliefs about the world and commit the speaker to their truth. The Finnish term konstatatiiviset is used similarly in linguistics to distinguish descriptive statements from performative or directive speech acts.