 Austin had earlier (1956) initiated the development of speech act taxonomy by means of the distinction between constative and performative utterances. Roughly, whereas in a constative utterance you report an already obtaining state of affairs—you say something—in a performative utterance you create something new: you do something (Austin 1956 [1979: 235]). Assertion is the paradigm of a constative utterance. Paradigm examples of performatives are utterances by means of which actions such as baptizing, congratulating and greeting are performed. However, when developing his general theory of speech acts, Austin abandoned the constative/performative distinction, the reason being that it is not so clear in what sense something is done for instance by means of an optative utterance, whereas nothing is done by means of an assertoric one.