The social component of the projection behavior of clausal complement contents

Abstract

Some accounts of presupposition projection predict that content's consistency with the Common Ground influences whether it projects (e.g., Heim 1983, Gazdar 1979a,b). I conducted an experiment to test whether Common Ground information about the speaker's social identity influences projection of clausal complement contents (CCs). Participants rated the projection of CCs conveying liberal or conservative political positions when the speaker was either Democrat- or Republican-affiliated. As expected, CCs were more projective when they conveyed political positions consistent with the speaker's political affiliation: liberal CCs were more projective with Democrat compared to Republican speakers, and conservative CCs were more projective with Republican compared to Democrat speakers. In addition, CCs associated with factive predicates (e.g., know) were more projective than those associated with non-factive predicates (e.g., believe). These findings suggest that social meaning influences projective meaning and that social meaning is constrained by semantic meaning, in line with previous research on the relation between other levels of linguistic structure/perception and social information.

Prior Beliefs Modulate Projection

“…This suggests that at least some by-participant variability observed in previous projection experiments (see, e.g., Tonhauser et al, 2018;Tonhauser & Degen, 2020) may be due to participants assigning different prior probabilities to investigated content. Does our work help explain the discrepancy in findings between the work of Mahler (2020) and Lorson (2018)? In the introduction, we raised four possibilities for the observed differences: a) the projective content investigated (CCs vs. pre-state content of stop); b) stimulus type (negated sentences vs. questions); c) the manipulation of prior beliefs (political party affiliation vs. gender stereotypes); and d) how explicitly the prior-manipulating information was provided to participants (statement of political party affiliation vs. use of a male or female name to indicate gender).…”

“…Did Linda stop working as a plumber? (Lorson, 2018, p. 38) Several differences between Mahler (2020) and Lorson (2018) could be implicated in the differential support for the hypothesis: a) the projective content investigated (CCs vs. prestate content of stop); b) stimulus type (negated sentences vs. questions); c) the manipulation of prior beliefs (political party affiliation vs. gender stereotypes); and d) how explicitly the priormanipulating information was provided to participants (statement of political party affiliation vs. use of a male or female name to indicate gender). The two experiments reported on in this article provide additional support for the hypothesis that prior beliefs modulate projection.…”

“…There is conflicting evidence for the hypothesis that prior beliefs modulate projection. Support for the hypothesis comes from Mahler ( 2020 ), who investigated the projection of politically charged CCs of English clause-embedding predicates. For example, the politically charged content in (1) is that Obama improved/damaged the American economy.…”

“…The two experiments reported on in this article provide additional support for the hypothesis that prior beliefs modulate projection. The experiments included 20 clause-embedding predicates (rather than just 7, as in Mahler, 2020 ) and the prior belief manipulation involved 20 properties of individuals, rather than just political party affiliation (as in Mahler, 2020 ), or gender (as in Lorson, 2018 ). Furthermore, we tested the hypothesis both at the level of the individual and of the group: Experiment 1 investigated the effect of prior beliefs on projection by measuring prior probability and projection in a within-participant design.…”

“…Furthermore, we tested the hypothesis both at the level of the individual and of the group: Experiment 1 investigated the effect of prior beliefs on projection by measuring prior probability and projection in a within-participant design. In Experiments 2a and 2b, prior probability and projection were measured in separate groups, as in Mahler ( 2020 ) and Lorson ( 2018 ).…”