Information Structure and Presupposition

Abstract

This article surveys and discusses the core points of contact between notions of information structure and notions of presupposition. Section 1 is devoted to the ‘weak’ presuppositional semantics for focus developed by Mats Rooth, describing its properties with regard to verification and accommodation and showing that it can successfully account for a wide range of phenomena. Section 2 examines the stronger thesis that focus–background structures give rise to existential presuppositions, and finds the counterarguments that have been raised to carry considerable weight. Section 3 looks into the relationship between Givenness and run-of-the-mill presuppositions, finding that this relationship is looser than might be expected, mainly because a presupposition may be in need of focus marking instead of givenness marking.

Different again

“…(In (80d)-(80e), we take the second argument of hit to be the patient and the third argument the agent; therefore hit(e')(K)(R) corresponds to an However, once we bring distance in between the antecedent utterance and the again utterance, as in (85), mirroring Saebø's (83), the pattern reverses, which is exactly what we expect, given our information-structural explanation. Note that the context requires a repetitive (as opposed to a counterdirectional) reading in both ( 84 The Kutchi Gujarati pattern thus tracks the local licensing of focus-related effects that we also find in English, as discussed by Saebø (2016), indicating that the distribution of pacho is indeed governed by information structure.…”

Understanding focus: Pitch, Placement and Coherence

“…We propose a new take on the background presupposition semantics of focus (Jackendoff 1972, Geurts & van der Sandt 2004a, expanding the basic idea by combining it with principles of discourse coherence (see also Hobbs 1990, Reese 2007 and by making the background presupposition sensitive to pitch contour. Presuppositional accounts of focus face substantial challenges (Dryer 1996, Rooth 1999, Saebø 2016) and we do not agree with how Geurts & van der Sandt (2004a,b) address these. Our solution to these challenges is elaborated in Section 4.6.…”

“…So Geurts & van der Sandt (2004a: pp28-30) argue instead for a polarity focus, thereby yielding for both (@30a) and (@30b) the tautological presupposition either nobody likes Michael or somebody does. Saebø (2016) and Büring (2004) argue convincingly that this strategy doesn't work, and we agree. Geurts & van der Sandt (2004a: p29) justify polarity focus for focussed quantifiers as follows.…”

“…The presupposition in (@33) can be accommodated to form a tautology, since 'there is a quantifier x such that x(p)' is true of any proposition p. 8 Thus we obtain the reading of Geurts & van der Sandt (a null presupposition) but avoid the problems with polarity focus pointed out by Büring (2004) and Saebø (2016). In addition, this semantics is also compatible with the data (@31) and (@32) involving the fall-rise contour.…”

“…Additionally, the falling contour requires that the presupposition is resolved such that the utterance's foreground content continues or elaborates on the presupposed information, whereas the fall-rise contour demands that the foreground stands in a contrast relation to the presupposition. While presupposition accounts of focus have been challenged (Dryer 1996, Rooth 1999, Saebø 2016), the problematic examples have been discussed without mentioning contour -our contour-sensitive semantics accounts for them (Section 4.6).…”