We’ve discovered that projection across conjunction is asymmetric (and it is!)

Abstract

Is the mechanism behind presupposition projection and filtering fundamentally asymmetric or symmetric? This is a foundational question for the theory of presupposition which has been at the centre of attention in recent literature (Schlenker in Theor Linguist 38 (3):287-316, 2008b. https://doi.org/10.1515/THLI.2008.021, Semant Pragmat 2(3):1-78, 2009. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.2.3; Rothschild in Semant Pragmat 4(3):1-43, 2011/2015. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.4.3 a.o.). It also bears on broader issues concerning the source of asymmetries observed in natural language: are these simply rooted in superficial asymmetries of language use (language use happens in time, which we experience as fundamentally asymmetric); or are they, at least in part, directly encoded in linguistic knowledge and representations? In this paper we aim to make progress on these questions by exploring presupposition projection across conjunction, which has traditionally been taken as a central piece of evidence that presupposition filtering is asymmetric in general. As a number of authors have recently pointed out, however, the evidence which has typically been used to support this conclusion is muddied by independent issues concerning redundancy; additional concerns have to do with the possibility of local accommodation. We report on a series of experiments, building on previous work by Chemla and Schlenker (Nat Lang Semant 20(2):177-226, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-012-9080-7) and Schwarz (in: Schwarz (ed) Experimental perspectives on presuppositions, Springer, Cham, 2015), using inference and acceptability tasks, which aim to control for both of these potential M. Mandelkern et al. confounds. In our results, we find strong evidence for left-to-right filtering across conjunctions, but no evidence for right-to-left filtering-even when right-to-left filtering would, if available, rescue an otherwise unacceptable sentence. These results suggest that presupposition filtering across conjunction is asymmetric, contra suggestions in the recent literature (Schlenker in Theor Linguist 34(3):157-212, 2008a. https://doi. org/10.1515/THLI.2008.013, 2009, and pave the way for the investigation of further questions about the nature of this asymmetry and presupposition projection more generally. Our results also have broader implications for the study of presupposition: we find important differences in the verdicts of acceptability versus inference tasks in testing for projected content, which has both methodological ramifications for the question of how to distinguish presupposed content, and theoretical repercussions for understanding the nature of projection and presuppositions more generally.

Presupposition projection from disjunction is symmetric

“…The results of Mandelkern et al (2020) strongly support an asymmetric view of conjunction. As can be seen in Figure 1, a PS-FIRST sentence is judged much worse in an EI context, compared to the PS-SECOND condition in the same context; moreover, it is worse in a way that goes over and above the difference between NO-PS-FIRST and NO-PS-SECOND.…”

“…Moreover, it raises the question of how generally symmetric filtering should be available for other connectives beyond disjunction, specifically conjunction. This becomes particularly important in light of recent results that presupposition filtering in conjunctions is asymmetric (Mandelkern et al 2020), discussed in detail below. Since Schlenker's account aims to provide a single general mechanism for presupposition projection, -which is of course conceptually attractive -it predicts that projection asymmetries and the processing costs associated with right-to-left filtering are uniform across the board.…”

“…EXPERIMENTAL BACKGROUND: ASYMMETRY IN CONJUNCTION. In designing an experimental paradigm to tease apart the predictions of symmetric vs. asymmetric accounts of projection from disjunction, we adapt the methodological approach of Experiment 3 in Mandelkern et al (2020), who investigate (a-)symmetry in conjunction experimentally. They use an acceptability task, where participants were shown a context and a sentence and were asked to evaluate how natural the sentence sounds in the given context on a 7-point scale.…”

“…We contrast this with the alternative view as laid out by Hirsch & Hackl (2014) . Finally, we review the prior experimental results for conjunction in Mandelkern et al (2020). Sections 3 presents our new experiment on disjunction, and the theoretical implications of our findings for theories of presupposition projection.…”

“…Our experiment aims to test the more fine-grained differences in predictions of the two main analytical options -symmetric vs. (at least by default) asymmetric projection from disjunction. We adapt and extend the methodological approach in Mandelkern et al (2020), who found a strong asymmetry in the projection behavior of conjunction. We carry over their paradigm to the domain of disjunction.…”