Predicting the presuppositions of soft triggers

Abstract

The central idea behind this paper is that presuppositions of soft triggers arise from the way our attention structures the informational content of a sentence. Some aspects of the information conveyed are such that we pay attention to them by default, even in the absence of contextual information. On the other hand, contextual cues or conversational goals can divert attention to types of information that we would not pay attention to by default. Either way, whatever we do not pay attention to, be it by default, or in context, is what ends up presupposed by soft triggers. This paper attempts to predict what information in the sentence is likely to end up being the main point (i.e. what we pay attention to) and what information is independent from this, and therefore likely presupposed. It is proposed that this can be calculated by making reference to event times. The notion of aboutness used to calculate independence is based on that of Demolombe and Fariñas del Cerro (In: Holdobler S (ed) Intellectics and computational logic: papers in honor of Wolfgang Bibel, 2000).Keywords Presuppositions AE Attention AE Soft triggers AE Aboutness AE Lexical semantics of verbs AE Factivity IntroductionMost studies on presuppositions are concerned with the projection problem, i.e. the question of how presuppositions of complex statements can be predicted from the presuppositions of their parts. The question of why presuppositions arise to begin with is a more rarely discussed issue, with much of the field being agnostic about the problem. This paper aims to address this question in connection with so-called soft presuppositional triggers. M. Abrusán (&)Lichtenberg Kolleg, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany e-mail: abrusan@alum.mit.edu 123 Linguist and Philos (2011) 34:491-535 DOI 10.1007/s10988-012-9108-y R E S E A R C H A R T I C L E Predicting the presuppositions of soft triggers Márta AbrusánPublished online: 1 May 2012 Ó The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Besides the agnostic position, there are two main types of attitudes to the triggering problem. The first answer is that presuppositions are just an arbitrary special type of meaning specified by the lexicon, requiring their own set of rules for combining with other elements when embedded in larger contexts. According to the second view, suggested in passing by Stalnaker (1974) and also endorsed by Simons (2001), Abusch (2010), Schlenker (2010), presuppositions might arise via pragmatic means from assumptions about rules that rational interlocutors follow, just like conversational implicatures.Neither of the above approaches are satisfactory: the first approach is nonexplanatory and posits an enormous amount of complexity in the semantic system. The second approach is theoretically attractive, however it is fair to say that to this date no satisfactory mechanism has been given that can derive based on rational rules of conversation why certain aspects of the meaning (and not others) are t...

Presupposition and Implicature

“…Beaver & Condoravdi (2003) and Abrusán (2011) argue that the presuppositions attached to at least some triggers are predictable from their at-issue dimensions. This is a twist in the debate about whether presuppositions are semantic or pragmatic, because it suggests that (at least some) presuppositions might be emergent from the at-issue meaning and its interactions with general pragmatic pressures, but also conventionalized.…”

“…The present section reviews the projection problem using i. Aspectual predicates like "continue" and "stop" (Simons, 2001;Abusch, 2002;Abrusán, 2011) ii. Attitude predicates like "know ", "realize", and "regret" (Kiparsky & Kiparsky, 1970;Karttunen, 1973Karttunen, , 1974Heim, 1992;Abusch & Rooth, 2004;Beaver, 2001Beaver, , 2010 iii.…”

Orthogonality and Presuppositions: A Bayesian Perspective

“…A reviewer mentions the characterization of soft triggers (= WT) proposed by Abrusán (2011) and wonders what relation it might have to Abbott's idea.…”

The Best Question: Explaining the Projection Behavior of Factives

“…Nonprojection occurs when the contextual requirement of an embedded clause can be satisfied by a local context. A range of alternative, pragmatic accounts have been proposed (e.g., Abrusán, 2011;Atlas, 2005;Boër & Lycan, 1976;Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, 2000;Kadmon, 2001;Karttunen & Peters, 1979;Kempson, 1975;Levinson, 1983;Simons, 2001Simons, , 2004Stalnaker, 1974;Wilson, 1975). All of these have argued that projection of the content of factive complements is due to general pragmatic considerations.…”