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ones—or, as Austin says : " We can't, then, expect any purely verbal cri-
terion of the performative ". 3
Without a purely verbal criterion of performative utterances it becomes
a question of importance whether performatives and performatives alone
are liable to the unhappinesses which Austin has listed. If it can be demon-
strated that constative utterances likewise are liable to a familiar type of
unhappiness, the dichotomy between constative and performative utterances
seems unclear.