Knowing, Telling, Trusting.

This paper falls into three parts. The first looks at wh-constructions, focussing on the so-called factual whs , 'X knows where... ', 'when', 'who', 'what' etc. I suggest, drawing on both linguistic considerations and evidence from developmental psychology, that these constructions take things as their objects, not propositions; and that this may be why they are learned before those taking sentential complements. The second part moves to the case of telling- wh : to constructions such as telling someone who is at the door. This construction brings a very particular set of requirements, not just to tell the truth, but to tell all the relevant truths and nothing but. The third section, in a critical discussion of Katherine Hawley's work, argues that an account of trust and testimony focussing on the telling- wh construction brings better results than one focussed on the blander idea of assertion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]