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Presupposition Projection and Entailment Relations

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Presupposition Projection and Entailment Relations Presupposition Projection and Entailment Relations Amaia Garcia Odon i Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee, Prof. Dr. Rob van der Sandt, Dr. Henk Zeevat, Dr. Isidora Stojanovic, Dr. Cornelia Ebert and Dr. Enric Vallduví for having accepted to be on my thesis committee. I am extremely grateful to my adviser, Louise McNally, and to Rob van der Sandt. Without their invaluable help, I would not have written this dissertation. Louise has been a wonderful adviser, who has always provided me with excellent guid- ance and continuous encouragement. Rob has been a mentor who has generously spent much time with me, teaching me Logic, discussing my work, and helping me clear up my thoughts. Very special thanks to Henk Zeevat for having shared his insights with me and for having convinced me that it was possible to finish on time. Thanks to Bart Geurts, Noor van Leusen, Sammie Tarenskeen, Bob van Tiel, Natalia Zevakhina and Corien Bary in Nijmegen; to Paul Dekker, Jeroen Groe- nendijk, Frank Veltman, Floris Roelofsen, Morgan Mameni, Raquel Fernández and Margot Colinet in Amsterdam; to Fernando García Murga, Agustín Vicente, Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria, Javier Ormazabal, Vidal Valmala, Gorka Elordieta, Urtzi Etxeberria and Javi Fernández in Vitoria-Gasteiz, to David Beaver and Mari- bel Romero. Also thanks to the people I met at the ESSLLIs of Bordeaux, Copen- hagen and Ljubljana, especially to Nick Asher, Craige Roberts, Judith Tonhauser, Fenghui Zhang, Mingya Liu, Alexandra Spalek, Cornelia Ebert and Elena Pa- ducheva. I gratefully acknowledge the financial help provided by the Basque Government – Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación (BFI07.96) and Fun- dación ICREA (via an ICREA Academia award to Louise McNally). iii Abstract In this dissertation, I deal with the problem of presupposition projection. I mostly focus on compound sentences composed of two clauses and conditional sentences in which the second clause carries a presupposition. The central claim is that the presupposition carried by the second clause projects by default, with the excep- tion of cases in which the presupposition entails the first clause (or, in disjunctive sentences, the negation of the first clause). In the latter cases, the presupposi- tion should not project, since it is logically stronger than the first clause (or its negation). Thus, in conjunctions, if the presupposition projected, the speaker’s assertion of the first clause would be uninformative. As for conditionals and dis- junctions, if the presupposition projected, the speaker would show inconsistency in his/her beliefs by showing uncertainty about the truth value of the first clause (or its negation). I argue that, in conditionals, this uncertainty is conversationally im- plicated whereas, in disjunctions, it results from the context’s compatibility with the first disjunct. I maintain that, in cases where projection is blocked, the presup- position is conditionalized to the first clause (or its negation). I demonstrate that the conditionalization is motivated in a straightforward way by the pragmatic con- straints on projection just described and that, contrary to what is defended by the so-called ‘satisfaction theory’, presupposition conditionalization is a phenomenon independent from local satisfaction. iv Resumen En esta tesis, trato el problema de la proyección de presuposiciones. Me cen- tro mayoritariamente en oraciones compuestas de dos cláusulas y en oraciones condicionales cuya segunda cláusula contiene una presuposición. El argumento central es que la presuposición contenida en la segunda cláusula proyecta por de- fecto, con la excepción de casos en los que la presuposición entraña la primera cláusula (o, en las oraciones disyuntivas, la negación de la primera cláusula). En estos últimos casos, la presuposición no debería proyectar, puesto que es lógi- camente más fuerte que la primera cláusula (o su negación). Por tanto, en las oraciones conjuntivas, si la presuposición proyectase, la aseveración de la primera cláusula por parte del hablante no sería informativa. En cuanto a las oraciones condicionales y disyuntivas, si la presuposición projectase, el hablante mostraría inconsistencia en sus creencias al mostrar incertidumbre acerca del valor de ver- dad de la primera cláusula (o su negación). Sostengo que, en oraciones condi- cionales, esta incertidumbre es implicada conversacionalmente mientras que, en las oraciones disyuntivas, resulta de la compatibilidad contextual de la primera cláusula. Mantengo que, en casos en los que la proyección es bloqueada, la pre- suposición es condicionalizada a la primera cláusula (o su negación). Demuestro que la condicionalización es motivada de manera directa por las restricciones de tipo pragmático descritas arriba y que, contrariamente a la idea defendida por la así llamada ‘teoría de la satisfacción’, la condicionalización de la presuposición es un fenómeno independiente de la satisfacción local de la misma. Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overview of the Proposed Analysis . .5 1.2 Chapter Summary and Thesis Structure . 17 2 The Presuppositions of a Discourse 21 2.1 Presupposition as Contextual Entailment . 21 2.1.1 Context Incrementation . 28 2.1.2 Presuppositional and Asserted Content . 36 2.2 The Issue of ‘Accommodation’ . 38 3 The Projection Problem in the Literature 43 3.1 The Projection Problem in the Early Literature . 44 3.1.1 Karttunen’s (1973) Filtering Account . 45 3.1.2 Gazdar’s (1979) Cancellation Account . 49 3.2 The ‘Satisfaction’ Theory . 57 3.2.1 Introduction . 57 3.2.2 Karttunen’s (1974): Satisfaction within the Local Context 58 3.2.3 Heim (1983b): CCPs as Encoders of Presupposition Her- itage Properties . 60 3.2.4 Counterintuitive Predictions: The ‘Proviso’ Problem and Proposed Solutions to it . 64 v vi CONTENTS 3.2.4.1 Plausibility Orderings and Relevance . 69 3.2.4.2 ‘Collapsing’ Conditional Presuppositions . 74 3.2.4.3 Potential and Actual ‘Accommodations’ . 79 3.2.4.4 Lassiter’s (2011) Probabilistic Account . 84 3.3 The Binding and Accommodation Theory . 86 3.3.1 Presuppositional DRT . 86 3.3.2 Binding . 89 3.3.3 Accommodation . 90 3.3.4 Presuppositional and Non-Presuppositional Interpretations 91 3.3.5 Conditional Presuppositions . 93 3.3.6 Quantified Sentences . 97 3.4 Chapter Summary . 98 4 Projection and Conditionalization 101 4.1 Introduction . 101 4.2 Pragmatic Constraints on Projection . 102 4.2.1 Contradictory Presuppositions . 106 4.3 Conditional Presuppositions . 109 4.4 Conditional Perfection . 119 4.5 Chapter Summary . 126 5 Further Issues 129 5.1 Introduction . 129 5.2 Focal Presuppositions . 129 5.3 Possessive and Definite Noun Phrases . 134 5.3.1 Possessives . 134 5.3.2 Definites . 137 5.4 Chapter Summary . 141 CONTENTS vii 6 Conclusions 143 Chapter 1 Introduction One of the distinctive features of presuppositions is that they project. That is, presuppositions escape from the scope of operators such as negation, modals, be- lieve-type verbs, the IF operator and the question operator. Put another way, these operators target the truth-conditional content of a sentence but not its presuppo- sitional content. Let us start with some examples of presupposition projection. Intuitively, the sentence in (1.1a), carries the presupposition in (1.1b): (1.1) a. Chris has given up writing b. Chris used to write The presupposition in (1.1b) is ‘triggered’ by the aspectual verb give up. Lexical expressions like aspectual verbs, factive verbs, definite noun phrases, possessive noun phrases, and particles like too, also, again, still, yet are presuppositional triggers. Additionally, syntactic constructions (i.e. clefts and pseudo-clefts), and focused constituents may also trigger presuppositions. In (1.1b), I use the symbol to indicate that the sentence in (1.1b) expresses the presupposition carried by the sentence in (1.1a). I will use this notational device throughout the thesis. As we can see in the next examples, when (1.1a) is embedded within the scope of an operator, the presupposition in (1.1b) projects to the main context. As a result, each of the sentences in the following examples, considered as a whole, also carries the presupposition in (1.1b): (1.2) a. Chris has not given up writing/ It is not true that Chris has given up writing b. It is possible that/ Perhaps/ Maybe Chris has given up writing 1 2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION c. Lenny thinks/believes that Chris has given up writing d. If Chris has given up writing, he must be depressed. e. Has Chris given up writing?/ Is it true that Chris has given up writing? Note that, if presuppositions are defined as propositions whose truth the speaker takes for granted for the purposes of the conversation or communicative exchange (Stalnaker (1973, 1974)), there is nothing surprising in the fact that they project. That is, the linguistic fact that presuppositions project is just a reflection of the fact that a speaker who is committed to the truth of a proposition for the purposes of a communicative exchange will keep his/her commitment regardless of whether the sentence that contains the presuppositional trigger is within the scope of an operator. For instance, if a speaker is committed to the truth of the proposition that Chris used to write (1.1b), s/he will keep his/her commitment to the truth of this proposition when s/he asserts that Chris has given up writing (1.1a), denies that Chris has given up writing (1.2a), raises the issue of whether Chris has given up writing (1.2b, 1.2d), reports that someone thinks that Chris has given up writing (1.2c), or asks whether Chris has given up writing (1.2e). Nevertheless, there are many cases in which the speaker uses a presuppositional trigger without presupposing the proposition triggered. For example, the second clause of the conjunctive sentence in (1.3a) carries the presupposition in (1.3b). However, (1.3a), as a whole, does not carry this presupposition, which just reflects the fact that the speaker of (1.3a) does not presuppose that (1.3b): (1.3) a.
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