Consider use of the verb pay in the following extract from EDGAR:
In consideration for the conveyance of the Assets to Buyer, Buyer hereby pays to Seller consideration (the “Purchase Price”) …
You can’t pay someone just by saying so. As linguists would say, pay cannot be used performatively. In other words, pay doesn’t work in language of performance.
Way more verbs cannot be used performatively than can: clean, eat, drive, and so on. But it’s rare that you encounter a nonperformative verb used in language of performance. In fact, the above example is the only one I can think of at the moment.
Can you think of any others?
