Veridicality and the acquisition of _think_

Across numerous languages, the attitude verb _think_ is learned later than other attitude verbs like _want_. But why? This essays advances a new hypothesis: children initially treat _think_ as a veridical yet non-factive verb akin to a class of verbs I call confirmatives. This hypothesis is argued to better explain existing data that troubles other hypotheses, and to find support from the ease with which children represent knowledge but not belief.