Presupposition projection from disjunction is symmetric

Incremental vs. symmetric accounts of presupposition projection: an experimental approach∗

The presupposition triggered by an expression E is generally satisfied by information that comes before rather than after E in the sentence or discourse. In Heim’s classic theory (1983), this left-right asymmetry is encoded in the lexical semantics of dynamic connectives and operators. But several recent analyses offer a more nuanced approach, in which presupposition satisfaction has two separa...

Symmetric Presupposition Satisfaction Is Mid-sentence Presupposition Correction

Why was it acceptable for me to utter this sentence, which contains the presuppositional expression my hamster? Presumably it’s because the sentence presupposes that I have a hamster; and a sentence with this presupposition is acceptable in any context like the one we’re in, where you and I come into the conversation sharing the belief that I have a hamster. It could also be that you didn’t kno...

Experimental Work in Presupposition and Presupposition Projection

Recent years have seen a surge of experimental approaches to the study of natural language meaning, both to get solid data on subtle phenomena hard to assess through introspection, and to understand how abstract characterizations of linguistic knowledge relate to real-time cognitive processes in language comprehension. The present paper reviews work in one of the most recent areas to see extens...

PRESUPPOSITION PROJECTION asPROOF

PRESUPPOSITION PROJECTION as PROOF CONSTRUCTION

Van der Sandt s anaphoric account of presupposition is gen erally considered to be the theory which makes the best empiri cal predictions about presupposition projection see e g Beaver The main insight is that there is an interesting cor respondence between the behavior of anaphoric pronouns in dis course and the projection of presuppositions in complex sentences Van der Sandt proposes to resol...