Much work has explored how belief reports of the form *x V-att p* function pragmatically not just as reports of *x*’s internal state, but as devices for indicating the status of *p* with respect to the Common Ground (CG). In addition to the well-studied case of factive verbs, recent work has explored negatively biased belief verbs, which suggest that *p* cannot or should not be added to the CG (e.g. Kierstead 2013, Hsiao 2017, Anvari et al. 2019, Glass 2020). Drawing from original fieldwork, I show that the negatively biased belief verb *pɑr* ‘think’ in Kipsigis (Kalenjin; Kenya) is best modeled as contributing, in addition to its basic belief semantics, an instruction for CG management: *p* is not to be added to the CG. Together with context-sensitive pragmatic reasoning, this instruction explains the curious case of a verb that can be used both to suggest that *p* is false and to remind the addressee that *p* is true.
