1.The sense I think the verification theory of meaning could be accused of committing the descriptive fallacy is by the assumption that every utterances has a true and false value. If we take statements or sentences that have no truth conditions at all and we ascribe that statement this trait, it cannot be verified. For a theory to not commit the descriptive fallacy it needs new methods of investigation, that don’t go on the bounds of empirical observation.
2.Austin’s performative utterances avoid the descriptive fallacy through statements that have no propositions and true or false to them. These performative utterances act in this manner as they are
statements composed of doing something—“I do” or “I apologize.” Furthermore, it can be seen that such phrases as these cannot have a truth value to them, for these statements don’t report facts or imply anything about the subject of the sentence.
3. Although performative utterances alone don’t imply any truth or falsity to themselves, if there were context for these utterances ( whether the utterance was a lie or not) could a performative utterance have true or false values?
I think your question points out the major distinction between descriptivists and ordinary language philosophers. Russel might argue that yes, to perform such an utterances when the context or intent has not been fulfilled would mean that the statement is false, and that any proper satisfaction of context and intent would result in the statement being true. However, Austin, and the common language philosophers, provide a strong rebuttal; if someone were to walk up to me and exclaim "I am divorcing you!", my immediate response would not be "False, you are not divorcing me" because that would imply that there was a condition of divorce to fulfill, but that I am rejecting it. I instead would likely stare at this man in confusion, or work to correct his infelicitous statement. It seems hard to imagine an instance of a performative utterance that could not be considered in the same manner.
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I thinks your question captures a main conflict between Austin and those previous philosophers who believe in the descriptive theory to various extent. Austin emphasizes another perspective of language in his account of "performative utterances", namely that language has to consider together with actions implied that is in respond to it. IF this is the case, as I understand performative utterance focuses on certain "Illocutionary act", which makes it more like a normative claim that aims at calling certain actions. In this ways, it cannot be evaluated in terms of true or false, rather one should (felicitous) or one should not (infelicitous).
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