Projection

Author	Title	Year	Journal/Proceedings	Reftype	DOI/URL
Mayol, L. and Castroviejo, E.	(Non)Integrated Evaluative Adverbs in Questions: A Cross-Romance Study [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Language Vol. 89(2), pp. 195-230	article	URL
Abstract: The goal of this article is to analyze the semantic contribution of evaluative adverbs (EAs) such as unfortunately in several languages of the Romance family, namely French, Catalan, and Spanish. Following Bonami and Godard (2008), we propose to analyze EAs as items that convey projective meaning in order to explain their peculiar semantic behavior (they cannot be directly denied, do not change the truth conditions of the proposition they evaluate, and are not factive) and their unacceptability in negative assertions. Unlike what has been claimed for many other languages, French allows EAs in questions, and we show that Catalan and Spanish do too, as long as some conditions are met. We propose an account that derives their interpretation in both assertions and questions: integrated French EAs take the proposition to their right, and if they appear in a WH-question, their interpretation is similar to that of unconditionals. In contrast, nonintegrated EAs in Catalan and Spanish have scope over a set of propositions, and are acceptable in questions only if the speaker is biased toward one of the propositions in the set denoted by the question. The acceptability of EAs in such questions, rejected by previous literature, is confirmed by an experimental study.
BibTeX: @article{10.2307/24671860, author = {Laia Mayol and Elena Castroviejo}, title = {(Non)Integrated Evaluative Adverbs in Questions: A Cross-Romance Study}, journal = {Language}, publisher = {Linguistic Society of America}, year = {2013}, volume = {89}, number = {2}, pages = {195--230}, url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/24671860} }
Portner, P.	Instructions for Interpretation as Separate Performatives [BibTeX]	2007	On Information Structure, Meaning and Form, pp. 407-426	incollection	DOI
BibTeX: @incollection{2007, author = {Paul Portner}, title = {Instructions for Interpretation as Separate Performatives}, booktitle = {On Information Structure, Meaning and Form}, publisher = {John Benjamins}, year = {2007}, pages = {407-426}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1075/la.100.22por} }
Abbott, B.	Presuppositions as non-assertions [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2000	Journal of Pragmatics Vol. 32, pp. 1419-1437	article	DOI
Abstract: It is commonly assumed that the assertion/presupposition distinction maps fairly directly onto the distinction between new and old information. This assumption is made doubtful by presupposing constructions that regularly convey new information: uniquely identifying descriptions, ‘informative presupposition’ it-clefts, reverse wh-clefts, announcements embedded under factives, nonrestrictive relatives. The presupposed content conveyed by these constructions can be regarded as part of the common ground only with an unconstrained principle of accommodation. But this reduces the claim that grammatical presuppositions are part of the common ground to vacuity. Presuppositions are a consequence of two factors. One is a tendency to limit assertion to one atomic proposition per rooted sentence. The other is the fact that almost any thought to be expressed will involve many atomic propositions. Depending on medium, genre and other contextual variables, new information will be presupposed if it is not necessary to assert it. The view is confirmed by evidence that written language, which would be expected to contain more new information per utterance than spoken language, contains a higher proportion of text in definite descriptions.
BibTeX: @article{Abbott2000, author = {Barbara Abbott}, title = {Presuppositions as non-assertions}, journal = {Journal of Pragmatics}, year = {2000}, volume = {32}, pages = {1419-1437}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00108-3} }
Abbott, B.	Presuppositions and common ground [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2008	Linguistics and Philosophy Vol. 31, pp. 523-538	article	DOI
Abstract: This paper presents problems for Stalnaker's common ground theory of presupposition. Stalnaker (Linguist and Philos 25:701-721, 2002) proposes a 2-stage process of utterance interpretation: presupposed content is added to the common ground prior to acceptance/rejection of the utterance as a whole. But this revision makes presupposition difficult to distinguish from assertion. A more fundamental problem is that the common ground theory rests on a faulty theory of assertion—that the essence of assertion is to present the content of an utterance as new information. Many examples are presented of utterances which are felicitous but not informative in this way.
BibTeX: @article{Abbott2008, author = {Barbara Abbott}, title = {Presuppositions and common ground}, journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy}, year = {2008}, volume = {31}, pages = {523-538}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-008-9048-8} }
Abbott, B.	An Information Packaging Approach to Presuppositions and Conventional Implicatures [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2016	Topoi Vol. 35(1), pp. 9-21	article	DOI
Abstract: Within the relevant semantics and pragmatics literature the terms ‘‘presupposition’’ and ‘‘conventional implicature’’ are used in a variety of different, but frequently overlapping, ways. The overlaps are perhaps not surprising, given that the two categories of conveyed meaning share the property of remaining constant in the scope of other operators—the property (Tonhauser et al. in Language 89:66–109, 2013) usefully characterize as PROJECTIVITY. One of my purposes in this paper will be to try to clarify these different usages. In addition to that we will explore two additional properties which are shared by some of these projective contents—STRONG CONTEXTUAL FELICITY (Tonhauser et al. in Language 89:66–109, 2013), and NEUTRALIZABILITY (Abbott in Drawing the boundaries of meaning: Neo-Gricean studies in pragmatics and semantics in honor of Laurence R. Horn. John Benjamins, Philadelphia, 2006). The idea is to try to explain all three properties by taking into account information packaging.
BibTeX: @article{Abbott2016, author = {Barbara Abbott}, title = {An Information Packaging Approach to Presuppositions and Conventional Implicatures}, journal = {Topoi}, publisher = {Springer}, year = {2016}, volume = {35}, number = {1}, pages = {9--21}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9285-0} }
Abrusán, M.	Predicting the presuppositions of soft triggers [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Linguistics and Philosophy Vol. 34(6), pp. 491-535	article	DOI
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).
BibTeX: @article{Abrusan2011, author = {Márta Abrusán}, title = {Predicting the presuppositions of soft triggers}, journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy}, publisher = {Springer}, year = {2011}, volume = {34}, number = {6}, pages = {491--535}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-012-9108-y} }
Abrusán, M.	On the focus-sensitive presupposition triggers too, again, also, even Márta ABRUSÁN — CNRS, IRIT Toulouse [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2014	Vol. 18Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, pp. 6-23	inproceedings
Abstract: This paper proposes to derive the presupposition of additive particles too, as well, also and the temporal particle again. It argues that the presuppositions of these particles can be predicted by the same presupposition triggering mechanism that was proposed for so-called soft triggers in Abrusán (2011). It is shown that presupposition suspension facts, characteristic of soft triggers, do not arise with additive particles because of their anaphoric and focus-sensitive nature. Finally, the paper proposes that the soft-hard presupposition distinction can be explained not in terms of differences in the nature of the presupposition but rather as a consequence of the anaphoric/focus-sensitive nature of various triggers.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Abrusan2014, author = {Márta Abrusán}, title = {On the focus-sensitive presupposition triggers too, again, also, even Márta ABRUSÁN — CNRS, IRIT Toulouse}, booktitle = {Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung}, year = {2014}, volume = {18}, pages = {6-23} }
Abrusán, M.	Disappearing acts of presuppositions:Cancelling the soft-hard distinction [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2014		unpublished	URL
Abstract: Some presuppositions are easier to cancel than others in embedded contexts. This contrast has been used as evidence for distinguishing two fundamentally different kinds of presuppositions, soft and hard (cf. Abusch 2002, 2010). ‘Soft’ presuppositions are usually assumed to arise in a pragmatic way, while ‘hard’ presuppositions are thought to be genuine semantic presuppositions. This paper argues against such a distinction and proposes to explain the difference in cancellation from inherent differences in how preposition triggers interact with the context: their anaphoricity, focus-sensitivity and question-answer congruence. As a second aim, the paper also derives the presuppositions of additive particles such as too, also, again and it-clefts, and adduces further empirical evidence for the focus sensitivity of factive inferences.
BibTeX: @unpublished{Abrusan2014a, author = {Márta Abrusán}, title = {Disappearing acts of presuppositions:Cancelling the soft-hard distinction}, year = {2014}, note = {Manuscript}, url = {https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/TMzNzZiN/.AbrusanDisappearingActsOfPresupp.pdf} }
Amaral, P., Roberts, C. and Smith, E.A.	Review of The Logic of Conventional Implicatures by Chris Potts [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2007	Linguistics and Philosophy Vol. 30, pp. 707-749	article	DOI
Abstract: We review Potts’ influential book on the semantics of conventional implicature (CI), offering an explication of his technical apparatus and drawing out the proposal’s implications, focusing on the class of CIs he calls supplements. While we applaud many facets of this work, we argue that careful considerations of the pragmatics of CIs will be required in order to yield an empirically and explanatorily adequate account.
BibTeX: @article{Amaral2007, author = {Patricia Amaral and Craige Roberts and E. Allyn Smith}, title = {Review of The Logic of Conventional Implicatures by Chris Potts}, journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy}, year = {2007}, volume = {30}, pages = {707-749}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-008-9025-2} }
Amaral, P.	Entailment, assertion, and textual coherence: the case of almost and barely [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2010	Linguistics Vol. 48(3), pp. 525-545	article	DOI
Abstract: This article contributes to the study of approximative adverbs almost and barely by providing psycholinguistic evidence for the asymmetry of theirmeaning components. The experiments reported are discussed against the background of a set of tests targeting the theoretical status of the meaningcomponents. The first experiment addresses the role played by each mean-ing component in textual coherence, whereas the second experiment addresses the interpretation in isolation of a sentence containing an approximative adverb. The results argue for a pragmatic di¤erence in the role ofthe meaning components, along the lines of Horn’s (2002) proposal, pertaining to the way in which the implications of approximative adverbs contribute to context update.
BibTeX: @article{Amaral2010, author = {Patricia Amaral}, title = {Entailment, assertion, and textual coherence: the case of almost and barely}, journal = {Linguistics}, year = {2010}, volume = {48}, number = {3}, pages = {525-545}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.2010.016} }
Amaral, P., Cummins, C. and Katsos, N.	Experimental Evidence on the Distinction Between Foregrounded and Backgrounded Meaning [BibTeX]	2011	Talk	misc	URL
BibTeX: @misc{Amaral2011, author = {Patricia Amaral and Chris Cummins and Napoleon Katsos}, title = {Experimental Evidence on the Distinction Between Foregrounded and Backgrounded Meaning}, year = {2011}, note = {Presented at ESSLLI 2011}, url = {https://crcummins.com/Amaral_Cummins_Katsos_ESSLLI.pdf} }
Anderbois, S., Brasoveanu, A. and Henderson, R.	At-issue Proposals and Appositive Impositions in Discourse [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2015	Journal of Semantics Vol. 32(1), pp. 93-138	article	DOI
Abstract: Potts (2005) and many subsequent works have argued that the semantic content of appositive (non-restrictive) relative clauses, e.g., the underlined material in John, who nearly killed a woman with his car, visited her in the hospital, must be in some way separate from the content of the rest of the sentence, i.e., from at-issue content. At the same time, there is mounting evidence from various anaphoric processes that the two kinds of content must be integrated into a single, incrementally evolving semantic representation. The challenge is how to reconcile this informational separation with these pervasive anaphoric connections. We propose a dynamic semantic account that accomplishes this by taking appositive and at-issue content to involve two different kinds of updates to the Context Set (CS). Treating the context set as a distinguished propositional variable, pcs, we argue that appositives directly impose their content on the CS by eliminating possible values assigned to pcs. In contrast, we treat at-issue assertions as introducing a new propositional dref and proposing that pcs be updated with its content, subject to addressee's response. In addition to capturing the behavior of appositives in discourse, we show that the account can be extended to capture the projection of appositive content past various sentential operators.
BibTeX: @article{Anderbois2015, author = {Scott Anderbois and Adrian Brasoveanu and Robert Henderson}, title = {At-issue Proposals and Appositive Impositions in Discourse}, journal = {Journal of Semantics}, year = {2015}, volume = {32}, number = {1}, pages = {93-138}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/fft014} }
Bade, N. and Renans, A.	A cross-linguistic view on the obligatory insertion of additive particles — Maximize Presupposition vs. Obligatory Implicatures [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021	Glossa: a journal of general linguistics Vol. 6(1), pp. 51	article	DOI
Abstract: Presupposition triggers, such as the additive particle too, the iterative particle again, and the definite determiner the, are obligatory if their presuppositions are satisfied in the context. This observation is accounted for in the literature by two theories: one based on Maximize Presupposition (e.g., Heim 1991; Percus 2006; Chemla 2008), the other based on Obligatory Implicatures (Bade 2016). In this paper, we report on two experiments in two typologically unrelated languages, Ga (Kwa) and German, which were designed to test the predictions of these two approaches for the insertion of additive particles. The results show that in both languages the insertion of additives is regulated by Obligatory Implicatures, posing challenges for Maximize Presupposition. Following Bade (2016), we assume a division of labor between the two theories in explaining obligatory presupposition effects.
BibTeX: @article{Bade2021, author = {Nadine Bade and Agata Renans}, title = {A cross-linguistic view on the obligatory insertion of additive particles — Maximize Presupposition vs. Obligatory Implicatures}, journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics}, year = {2021}, volume = {6}, number = {1}, pages = {51}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.727} }
Bary, C. and Maier, E.	The landscape of speech reporting [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021	Semantics and Pragmatics Vol. 14(8)	article	DOI
Abstract: Languages offer various ways to report what someone said. There is now a vast but heterogeneous literature on speech report constructions scattered throughout the semantics literature. We offer a bird’s eye view of the entire landscape of reporting and propose a classification along two dimensions: at-issue vs. not-at-issue, and eventive vs. non-eventive. This bird’s eye perspective leads to genuinely new insights, for instance on the nature of quotative evidentials and reportative moods, viz., that they are both eventive, and hence semantically more like some types of direct and indirect speech than reportative evidentials and modals are.
BibTeX: @article{Bary2021, author = {Corien Bary and Emar Maier}, title = {The landscape of speech reporting}, journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics}, year = {2021}, volume = {14}, number = {8}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.14.8} }
Beaver, D., Roberts, C., Simons, M. and Tonhauser, J.	Questions Under Discussion: Where information structure meets projective content [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2017	Annual Review of Linguistics Vol. 3	article	DOI
Abstract: We discuss problems familiar from the literature on presupposition and information structure, and illustrate how a synthesis using the Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework yields fresh insight. In this framework, discourse is analyzed in terms of the strategy of inquiry pursued by the interlocutors, and individual utterances are interpreted relative to the question being addressed. This way of thinking offers a new perspective on diverse phenomena, including the projection of presuppositions, association with focus, contrastive topic marking, and variability of projection behavior. We review the principal issues and prior lines of research in each of these areas, and show how the issues may be recast in QUD terms
BibTeX: @article{Beaver2017, author = {David Beaver and Craige Roberts and Mandy Simons and Judith Tonhauser}, title = {Questions Under Discussion: Where information structure meets projective content}, journal = {Annual Review of Linguistics}, year = {2017}, volume = {3}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011516-033952} }
Biezma, M. and Rawlins, K.	Rhetorical questions: Severing questioning from asking [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2017	Proceedings of SALT	inproceedings	DOI
Abstract: Rhetorical questions (RhQs) are puzzling for theoretical accounts of questions: while they have an interrogative form, they seem to provide the same information as a parallel assertion. We propose that solving this puzzle requires a deeper understanding of the dynamics of interrogative utterances, and in particular we argue for a dynamics parallel to what has recently been proposed for assertions and imperatives: uttering an interrogative is a proposal to update the context, in this case the QUD, and its acceptance leads to the final inquisitive update. We argue that RhQs are interrogatives triggering the presupposition that the context entails the answer, so if accepted as a QUD, they would be immediately answered. This, in combination with the dynamics we develop, allows us to explain both the similarities with assertions as well as the differences in their discourse function.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Biezma2017, author = {María Biezma and Kyle Rawlins}, title = {Rhetorical questions: Severing questioning from asking}, booktitle = {Proceedings of SALT}, year = {2017}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v27i0.4155} }
Clark, B.	Pragmatics and Intonation [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2017	Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics	incollection	DOI
Abstract: Intonation impacts pragmatic meaning. A range of empirical evidence shows that the pragmatic functions of intonation are specifiable. The dimensions of meaning impacted by intonation include at-issue meanings (for example, what is asserted in an assertion), presuppositions, conversational implicatures, and conventional implicatures. Certain linguistic expressions (such as the English exclusive only) are dependent on intonation, and some of these dependencies impact at-issue meaning. Intonation can also trigger certain presuppositions, in particular a certain type of anaphoric presupposition associated with the discourse context. There is also a robust interaction between intonation and implicature. The intonational prominence associated with focus can trigger certain scalar, existence, and exhaustive conversational implicatures. Finally, certain intonational contours (for example, the rise-fall-rise contour) appear to define conventional implicatures.
BibTeX: @incollection{Clark2017, author = {Brady Clark}, title = {Pragmatics and Intonation}, booktitle = {Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics}, year = {2017}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.208} }
Cummins, C., Amaral, P. and Katsos, N.	Experimental Investigations of the Typology of Presupposition Triggers [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	Vol. 5(23)HUMANA.MENTE Journal of Philosophical Studies	incollection
Abstract: The behaviour of presupposition triggers in human language has been extensively studied and given rise to many distinct theoretical proposals. One intuitively appealing way of characterising presupposition is to argue that it constitutes backgrounded meaning, which does not contribute to updating the conversational record, and consequently may not be challenged or refuted by discourse participants. However, there are a wide range of presupposition triggers, some of which can systematically be used to introduce new information. Is there, then, a clear psychological distinction between presupposition and assertion? Do certain expressions vacillate between presupposing and asserting information? And is information backgrounding a categorical or a gradient phenomenon? In this paper we argue for the value of experimental methods in addressing these questions, and present a pilot study demonstrating backgrounding effects of presupposition triggers, and suggesting their gradience in nature. We discuss the implications of these findings for theoretical categorisations of presupposition triggers.
BibTeX: @incollection{Cummins2012, author = {Chris Cummins and Patricía Amaral and Napoleon Katsos}, title = {Experimental Investigations of the Typology of Presupposition Triggers}, booktitle = {HUMANA.MENTE Journal of Philosophical Studies}, year = {2012}, volume = {5}, number = {23} }
Cummins, C. and Rohde, H.	Evoking Context with Contrastive Stress: Effects on Pragmatic Enrichment [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2015	Frontiers in Psychology Vol. 6	article	DOI
Abstract: Although it is widely acknowledged that context influences a variety of pragmatic phenomena, it is not clear how best to articulate this notion of context and thereby explain the nature of its influence. In this paper, we target contextual alternatives that are evoked via focus placement and test how the same contextual manipulation can influence three different phenomena that involve pragmatic enrichment: scalar implicature, presupposition, and coreference. We argue that focus placement influences these three phenomena indirectly by providing the listener with information about the likely question under discussion (QUD) that a particular utterance answers (Roberts, 1996/2012). In three listening experiments, we find that the predicted interpretations are indeed made more available when focus placement is added to the final element (to the scalar adjective, to an entity embedded under the negated presupposition trigger, and to the predicate of a pronoun). These findings bring together several distinct strands of work on the effect of focus placement on interpretation all in the domain of pragmatic enrichment. Together they advance our empirical understanding of the relation between focus placement and QUD and highlight commonalities between implicature, presupposition, and coreference.
BibTeX: @article{Cummins2015, author = {Chris Cummins and Hannah Rohde}, title = {Evoking Context with Contrastive Stress: Effects on Pragmatic Enrichment}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, year = {2015}, volume = {6}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01779} }
Degen, J. and Tonhauser, J.	Prior Beliefs Modulate Projection [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021	Open Mind, pp. 1-12	article	DOI
Abstract: Beliefs about the world affect language processing and interpretation in several empirical domains. In two experiments, we tested whether subjective prior beliefs about the probability of utterance content modulate projection, that is, listeners’ inferences about speaker commitment to that content. We find that prior beliefs predict projection at both the group and the by-participant level: the higher the prior belief in a content, the more speakers are taken to be committed to it. This result motivates the integration of formal analyses of projection with cognitive theories of language understanding.
BibTeX: @article{Degen2021, author = {Judith Degen and Judith Tonhauser}, title = {Prior Beliefs Modulate Projection}, journal = {Open Mind}, publisher = {MIT Press - Journals}, year = {2021}, pages = {1--12}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00042} }
De Kuthy, K. and Meurers, D.	Integrating GIVENness into a structured meaning approach in HPSG [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar	inproceedings	URL
BibTeX: @inproceedings{DeKuthy2011, author = {De Kuthy, Kordula and Detmar Meurers}, title = {Integrating GIVENness into a structured meaning approach in HPSG}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar}, publisher = {CSLI Publications}, year = {2011}, url = {https://depts.washington.edu/hpsg2011/pp/DeKuthy-Meurers.pdf} }
De Kuthy, K. and Meurers, D.	Focus projection between theory and evidence [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory, pp. 207-240	incollection	DOI
Abstract: In this paper, we want to bring together and compare the predictions of traditional focus projection on the one hand and the more recent pragmatics-only approaches (Roberts, 2006; Kadmon, 2006) on the other with two sources of empirical evidence, experimental and corpus-based. In essence, the paper is an empirical exploration of the evidence for focus projection, working out the empirical challenge that a pragmatics-only approach needs to find an alternative explanation for.
BibTeX: @incollection{DeKuthy2012, author = {De Kuthy, Kordula and Detmar Meurers}, title = {Focus projection between theory and evidence}, booktitle = {Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory}, publisher = {De Gruyter Mouton}, year = {2012}, pages = {207-240}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614510888.207} }
Destruel, E.	The French c’est-cleft: An empirical study on its meaning and use [BibTeX]	2012	Empirical issues in syntax and semantics Vol. 9, pp. 95-112	article	URL
BibTeX: @article{Destruel2012, author = {Destruel, Emilie}, title = {The French c’est-cleft: An empirical study on its meaning and use}, journal = {Empirical issues in syntax and semantics}, year = {2012}, volume = {9}, pages = {95--112}, url = {https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/31030427/eiss9-destruel_V3.pdf?1364215828=&response-content-disposition=inline; filename=The_meaning_and_use_of_the_French_cest_c.pdf&Expires=1628204795&Signature=IMABLBpyn8A4gc0X-Oqz1pgsJzNRLkfJy5eDwvMWBVDJzfXLYvK1dVKRRj59u kvfvCQXnnTt8GTK59wFXvcMp8W09pecCSaASODyjn2RC21vURZkcAFY-5N6HhjcOVnLbfSbMQRRi-6HlOG68LWXHkPhtsj44StVObKx0bJEYEfn0VOy4WjuY0qQqoSLVuM3bJa8S4lJjN8FtfnwxAFEgoP7tXAiBG25TL4-KJ21eG1FKJWBmNNMpwa5NYD8S nndy3rAObxWPmEN TU9m5ya8-FZ8OEs2dydXRmtBD30WfV1Dm408d3yvfOIJF-77wftDwJaLyJoqYoJG3hCLuaw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA} }
Djärv, K. and Bacovcin, H.A.	Prosodic effects on factive presupposition projection [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2020	Journal of Pragmatics Vol. 169, pp. 61-85	article	DOI
Abstract: This paper investigates the interaction between prosodically mediated pragmatics and factive presupposition projection. In particular, it addresses a set of proposals, articulated most clearly in Abrusán (2011, 2016); Simons et al. (2010), and Simons et al. (2017), which argue that prosodically mediated focus, as a signal of the Question Under Discussion (Roberts, 1996, 2012), determines whether or not particular content becomes presupposed (Abrusán) or ends up projecting from the scope of entailment-targeting operators (Simons et al.). We present experimental results demonstrating that the predictions made by these proposals are too strong: although focus is shown to have an effect on factive presupposition projection, it does not completely eliminate the factive inference, as argued by these authors. Rather, we find that the main factor determining whether or not a factive inference projects is the identity of the predicate. We argue that this supports a view whereby factive presuppositions are lexically triggered, and may only be cancelled in a particular set of embedded contexts via local accommodation (Heim, 1983). However, focus may give rise to inferences via the QUD, to the effect that the factive inference is weakened (although not completely eliminated).
BibTeX: @article{Djaerv2020, author = {Kajsa Djärv and Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin}, title = {Prosodic effects on factive presupposition projection}, journal = {Journal of Pragmatics}, publisher = {Elsevier BV}, year = {2020}, volume = {169}, pages = {61--85}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.04.011} }
Faller, M.	Semantics and Pragmatics of Evidentials in Cuzco Quechua [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2002	School: Stanford University	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: This dissertation explores the semantics and pragmatics of evidentiality through a detailed study of three evidential markers in Cuzco Quechua (spoken in Cuzco, Peru), the Direct -mi, the Conjectural -ch´a and the Reportative -si. I adopt a narrow definition of evidentiality as the linguistic encoding of the speaker’s grounds for making a speech act, which in the case of assertions corresponds with his or her source of information. The meaning of each of the three Cuzco Quechua evidentials, as well as their absence, is described based on data collected by the author and from published sources. One of the central cross-linguistic questions in the study of evidentiality is how it is related to epistemic modality. I argue that the two concepts are distinct, but overlapping categories. I show that the evidential enclitics in Cuzco Quechua differ from typical epistemic modals in that they do not contribute to the main proposition expressed, can never occur in the scope of propositional operators such as negation, and can only occur in illocutionary force bearing environments. Furthermore, the Direct and the Reportative are not analyzable in terms of epistemic necessity or possibility. In contrast, the Conjectural also encodes epistemic possibility, and it is therefore considered to be in the evidentiality/epistemic modality overlap. It is argued that an evidential scale in terms of strength of evidence can be defined. Against previous proposals, I argue that this is only a partial ordering, since conjectural is not stronger than reportative evidence, or vice versa. For each ordered pair of evidentials the weaker one (e.g. Reportative) gives rise to the implicature that the stronger one (e.g. Direct) could not have been used in its stead. The Cuzco Quechua evidentials are analyzed as illocutionary modifiers which add v to or modify the sincerity conditions of the act they apply to. The resulting act is assertion of the proposition expressed p for the Direct, and assertion of p for the Conjectural. For sentences with the Reportative, I propose a new illocutionary act: “presentation” of p. This analysis accounts for the afore-mentioned as well as other properties of these evidentials
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Faller2002, author = {Martina Faller}, title = {Semantics and Pragmatics of Evidentials in Cuzco Quechua}, school = {Stanford University}, year = {2002}, url = {https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/martina.t.faller/documents/Thesis-A4.pdf} }
Faller, M.	Reportativity, (not-)at-issueness, and assertion [BibTeX]	2014	Vol. 40Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society	inproceedings	DOI
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Faller2014, author = {Martina Faller}, title = {Reportativity, (not-)at-issueness, and assertion}, booktitle = {Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society}, year = {2014}, volume = {40}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v40i0.3133} }
von Fintel, K.	What is presupposition accommodation, again? [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2008	Philosophy of Language Vol. 22, pp. 137-170	article	DOI
Abstract: Presupposition accomodation is the process by which the context is adjusted quietly and without fuss to accept the utterance of a sentence that imposes certain requirements on the context in which it is processed. In this paper, I explore some questions about accommodation that are still often asked. There are complaints that the putative process involves mysterious magic and that it is posited only to save a superfluous of wrong theory of presupposition. I argue that these complaints are mistaken: accommodation is not magic and is needed. The paper has two parts: 1. Sections 1-4 explain the common ground theory of presupposition and defend the need for and the propriety of accommodation. 2. Sections 5-7 address some further questions about accommodation and are somewhat more speculative.
BibTeX: @article{Fintel2008, author = {Kai von Fintel}, title = {What is presupposition accommodation, again?}, journal = {Philosophy of Language}, year = {2008}, volume = {22}, pages = {137-170}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2008.00144.x} }
Gauker, C.	Against accommodation: Heim, van der Sandt, and the presupposition projection problem [BibTeX]	2008	Philosophy of Language Vol. 22, pp. 171-205	article	DOI
BibTeX: @article{Gauker2008, author = {Christopher Gauker}, title = {Against accommodation: Heim, van der Sandt, and the presupposition projection problem}, journal = {Philosophy of Language}, year = {2008}, volume = {22}, pages = {171-205}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2008.00145.x} }
Geurts, B. and van der Sandt, R.	Interpreting Focus [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2004	Theoretical Linguistics Vol. 30, pp. 1-44	article	URL
Abstract: Although it is widely agreed, if often only tacitly, that there is a close connection between focus and presupposition, recent research has tended to shy away from the null hypothesis, which is that focus is systematically associated with presupposition along the following lines: The Background-Presupposition Rule (BPR) Whenever focusing gives rise to a background λx.ϕ(x), there is a presupposition to the effect that λx.ϕ(x) holds of some individual. This paper aims to show, first, that the evidence in favour of the BPR is in fact rather good, and attempts to clarify its role in the interpretation of focus particles like ‘only’ and ‘too’, arguing that unlike the former the latter is focus-sensitive in an idiosyncratic way, adding its own interpretative constraints to those of the BPR. The last part of the paper discusses various objections that have been raised against the BPR, taking a closer look at the peculiarities of ‘nobody’ and ‘somebody’, and comparing the interpretative effects of focusing with those of it-clefts.
BibTeX: @article{Geurts2004, author = {Bart Geurts and Rob van der Sandt}, title = {Interpreting Focus}, journal = {Theoretical Linguistics}, year = {2004}, volume = {30}, pages = {1-44}, url = {https://linguistics.ucla.edu/general/Conf/LaBretesche/papers/geurts.pdf} }
Goebel, A.	Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers and Focus-sensitivity [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2020	School: University of Massachusets, Amherst	phdthesis	DOI
Abstract: This dissertation investigates the role of Focus-sensitivity for a typology of presupposition triggers. The central hypothesis is that Focus-sensitive triggers require a linguistic antecedent in the discourse model, whereas presuppositions of triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are satisfied as entailments of the Common Ground. This hypothesis is supported by experimental evidence from two borne out predictions. First, Focus-sensitive triggers are sensitive to the salience of the antecedent satisfying their presupposition, as operationalized via the Question Under Discussion, and lead to interference-type effects, while triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are indifferent to the QUD-structure. Second, Focus-sensitive triggers are harder to globally accommodate than triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity. The picture that emerges from these results is that the same kind of meaning - presuppositions - is grounded in distinct underlying representations of context in relation to an independent property of the trigger - Focus-sensitivity - which directly affects the way a trigger is processed.
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Goebel2020, author = {Alexander Goebel}, title = {Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers and Focus-sensitivity}, school = {University of Massachusets, Amherst}, year = {2020}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.7275/19172131} }
Grubic, M.	On the projection behavior of freely associating mod- (= ‘only’) in Bole [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning	inproceedings
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Grubic2011a, author = {Mira Grubic}, title = {On the projection behavior of freely associating mod- (= ‘only’) in Bole}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning}, year = {2011} }
Harris, J.A. and Potts, C.	Perspective-shifting with appositives and expressives [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2009	Linguistics and Philosophy Vol. 32(6), pp. 523-552	article	DOI
Abstract: Much earlier work claims that appositives and expressives are invariably speaker-oriented. These claims have recently been challenged, most extensively by Amaral et al. (Linguist and Philos 30(6): 707–749, 2007). We are convinced by this new evidence. The questions we address are (i) how widespread are non-speaker-oriented readings of appositives and expressives, and (ii) what are the underlying linguistic factors that make such readings available? We present two experiments and novel corpus work that bear directly on this issue. We find that non-speaker-oriented readings, while rare in actual language use, are systematic. We also find that non-speaker-oriented readings occur even outside of attitude predications, which leads us to favor an account based in pragmatically-mediated perspective shifting over one that relies on semantic binding by attitude predicates.
BibTeX: @article{Harris2009, author = {Jesse A. Harris and Christopher Potts}, title = {Perspective-shifting with appositives and expressives}, journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy}, year = {2009}, volume = {32}, number = {6}, pages = {523-552}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-010-9070-5} }
Jayez, J.	Projective meaning and attachment [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2009	Proceedings of the 17th Amsterdam Colloquium, pp. 306-315	inproceedings	DOI
Abstract: This paper examines the possibility of providing a unified account of the projection properties of presuppositions, conventional and conversational implicatures. I discuss the solution offered in (Roberts et al. 2009) and show that the central notion we need to cover the spectrum of observations is that of attachment.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Jayez2009, author = {Jacques Jayez}, title = {Projective meaning and attachment}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 17th Amsterdam Colloquium}, year = {2009}, pages = {306-315}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_33} }
Koev, T.	On the Information Status of Appositive Relative Clauses [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	Logic, Language and Meaning	incollection	DOI
Abstract: Existing semantic theories of appositive relative clauses (ARCs) assume that ARCs contribute asserted but not at-issue content (Böer & Lycan [4], Bach [3], Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet [5], Potts [13], AnderBois et al. [2], Murray [12]). In this paper I demonstrate that the information status of ARCs depends on their linear position in the clause: clause-medial ARCs are not at-issue whereas clause-final ARCs can behave like regular at-issue content. I propose a uniform one-dimensional semantics under which ARCs are conjuncts that can acquire at-issue status if the issue raised by the main clause has been terminated. The idea is formally implemented in Dynamic Predicate Logic (Groenendijk & Stokhof [9]) enriched with propositional variables (AnderBois et al. [2]).
BibTeX: @incollection{Koev2012, author = {Todor Koev}, title = {On the Information Status of Appositive Relative Clauses}, booktitle = {Logic, Language and Meaning}, publisher = {Springer}, year = {2012}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31482-7_41} }
Koev, T.	Apposition and the Structure of Discourse [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	School: Rutgers	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: The current dissertation focuses on two interpretational properties of APPOSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS: (i) their (often) NOT-AT-ISSUE status, i.e. the fact that they can be perceived as secondary to the main point of the utterance, and (ii) their PROJECTION behavior, i.e. the fact that they typically escape the scope of external operators (e.g. Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet 2000, Potts 2005). I analyze appositive constructions as adjuncts (e.g. Jackendoff 1977, Potts 2005) which are interpreted as in-situ conjuncts. Root clauses, appositive relative clauses, and possibly all appositive constructions are assumed to form FORCE PHRASES (see Rizzi 1997, Krifka 2001). Force heads are operators which introduce a fresh variable for the proposition of their scope. Since lexical expressions (operators or predicates) are relativized to propositional variables, Force heads can bind into the lexical expressions in their syntactic scope (cf. Stone 1999, Stone & Hardt 1999). This mechanism keeps apart appositive content from main clause content and is key to explaining the exceptional properties of appositives mentioned above. First, propositional variables introduced by Force heads express proposals to update the context set. The fact that appositive proposals are usually introduced before main clause proposals explains why appositives are often not at-issue: all proposals associated with a sentence are silently accepted except the one introduced last, which is at-issue. Second, similarly to Force heads, lexical operators introduce propositional variables for the content of their scope, but, unlike Force heads, can be bound and thus interact with higher operators. Since appositives form separate ForcePs, their interpretation does not depend on whether or not they appear in the syntactic scope of higher operators such as negation or modals. In other words, appositive content necessarily projects. The proposed analysis is embedded into a discourse model in which SPEECH CONTEXTS keep track of individual speech participants, their discourse commitments, and the context set (see Stalnaker 1978, Kaplan 1989, Farkas & Bruce 2010). The analysis is fleshed out in UPDATE WITH SPEECH CONTEXTS, an update logic in which the formal mechanisms of interpreting formulas and restricting the context set are kept separate (see also AnderBois et al. 2010, Murray 2010, Bittner 2011).
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Koev2013, author = {Todor Koev}, title = {Apposition and the Structure of Discourse}, school = {Rutgers}, year = {2013}, url = {https://search.proquest.com/openview/3686668834d9802d690c6e574100c8e0/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&casa_token=UcbU6GkdmVgAAAAA:tALeY9kMIT1ZgKh8EgDnipDGDCNMODExLsQ9plRZVhg2ag6W8Pga9n-nHNVRTUNK8s_eGkBYfg} }
Koev, T.	Notions of at-issueness [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2018	Language and Linguistics Compass Vol. 12(12)	article	DOI
Abstract: Upon hearing the sentence Messi, who once scored a goal with his hand, won the Ballon d'Or, the addressee is likely to interpret the main clause as conveying the “main point” and view the appositive relative clause as contributing secondary information. The intuition that some part of the utterance conveys the main point has recently been discussed in formal semantics and pragmatics under the label of “at-issueness.” However, this label has been used in a variety of ways, and there is often little clarity as to what is meant by it. This survey tries to clear things up by identifying and spelling out three specific notions of at-issueness, i.e. Q(uestion)-at-issueness, P(roposal)-at-issueness, and C(oherence)-at-issueness. After looking into what they say about similar kinds of data, I conclude that while these notions appear to capture facets of the same broad intuition, they are truly distinct. The paper also discusses potential connections of at-issueness to projection and commitment strength.
BibTeX: @article{Koev2018, author = {Todor Koev}, title = {Notions of at-issueness}, journal = {Language and Linguistics Compass}, publisher = {Wiley}, year = {2018}, volume = {12}, number = {12}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12306} }
Lassiter, D.	Symmetric presupposition satisfaction is mid-sentence presupposition correction [BibTeX]	2009	ESSLLI 2009 Workshop on New Directions in the Theory of Presupposition	inproceedings	URL
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Lassiter2009, author = {Daniel Lassiter}, title = {Symmetric presupposition satisfaction is mid-sentence presupposition correction}, booktitle = {ESSLLI 2009 Workshop on New Directions in the Theory of Presupposition}, year = {2009}, url = {https://web.stanford.edu/ danlass/Lassiter-symmetric-presuppositions.pdf} }
Lassiter, D.	The weakness of must In and defense of a Mantra [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2014	Proceedings of SALT 24	inproceedings	DOI
Abstract: Many linguist have claimed that must’s meaning is weaker than epistemic necessity—a claim dubbed “the Mantra” in an influential recent paper by von Fintel and Gillies (2008). von Fintel and Gillies argue that the Mantra is false, and that the intuitions that have driven it can be accounted for by appealing to evidential meaning: must requires that the proposition it embeds is true and maximally certain, but also known only by indirect means. I show that von Fintel and Gillies do not provide a compelling argument against the Mantra, and that their theory of evidential meaning, while promising in certain respects, also has serious empirical and conceptual problems. In addition, a variety of corpus examples indicate that speakers who assert must p are not always maximally confident in the truth of p. As an alternative, I re-implement von Fintel and Gillies’ theory of indirect evidentiality in a probabilistic, Mantra-compatible framework. Ultimately, both sides of the debate are partly right: must is weak in several respects, but it also encodes an indirect evidential meaning.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Lassiter2014, author = {Daniel Lassiter}, title = {The weakness of must In and defense of a Mantra}, booktitle = {Proceedings of SALT 24}, year = {2014}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v24i0.2985} }
Lee, J.	Evidentiality and its relationship to temporality and modality [BibTeX]	2011	School: The Ohio State University	phdthesis
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Lee2011, author = {Jungmee Lee}, title = {Evidentiality and its relationship to temporality and modality}, school = {The Ohio State University}, year = {2011} }
Lee, J.	Temporal constraints on the meaning of evidentiality [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Natural Language Semantics Vol. 21, pp. 1-41	article	DOI
Abstract: This paper explores how the meaning of evidentiality is temporally constrained, by investigating the meaning of Korean evidential sentences with –te. Unlike evidential sentences in languages that have previously been formally analyzed , e.g. Cuzco Quechua and Cheyenne, Korean evidential sentences with –te are compatible with both direct and indirect evidence types. In this paper, I analyze –te as an evidential that lexically encodes the meaning of a ‘sensory observation’. I account for the availability of both direct and indirect evidential readings in terms of the variable temporal relation between relevant eventualities. I show that this temporal relation is compositionally determined by the interaction between –te and tense, and that it in turn constrains possible (direct vs. indirect) evidence types. I also provide empirical evidence for the modal meaning contributions of –te sentences, and develop a formal analysis in terms of Kratzer’s modal theory. The paper concludes by discussing the empirical and theoretical improvements of the proposed analysis over earlier analyses by Chung, and the implications for crosslinguistic studies of evidentials.
BibTeX: @article{Lee2013, author = {Jungmee Lee}, title = {Temporal constraints on the meaning of evidentiality}, journal = {Natural Language Semantics}, year = {2013}, volume = {21}, pages = {1-41}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-012-9088-z} }
Liu, M.	How evaluative adverbs project and why [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of ESSLLI 2011: Workshop on Projective Content, pp. 82	inproceedings
Abstract: Simons et al. (2011) define a new category of ‘projective meanings’, which include not just conventional presupposition (CPs) but also certain conventional implicatures (CIs). In this paper, I discuss whether evaluative adverbs (eADVs), a subclass of Potts’ (2005) CIs, project. Liu (in preparation) addresses the necessity of distinguishing two different eADVs: factive eADVs have a lexical semantics and trigger a CI as predicted in Potts (2005), but their CI content presupposes the at-issue content, i.e. there is an interdimensional dependence, which poses a problem for a four-valued CI logic; nonfactive eADVs have a conditional semantics and trigger a CI, which differs from that predicted in Potts (2005) but is independent of the at-issue content. I argue that this distinction predicts correctly their projection behaviors: due to the interdimensional dependence, factive eADVs are not embeddable in entailmentcancelling contexts, whereas nonfactive eADVs can appear for instance in a conditional and project out of it due to the interdimensional independence. I compare this case with the case of supplements that sometimes fail to project (Schlenker 2010a, 2010b): the former imposes a semantic constraint and the latter a semantic/pragmatic constraint on what projects.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{liu2011, author = {Liu, Mingya}, title = {How evaluative adverbs project and why}, booktitle = {Proceedings of ESSLLI 2011: Workshop on Projective Content}, year = {2011}, pages = {82} }
Liu, M.	Multidimensional Semantics of Evaluative Adverbs [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012		book
Abstract: Multidimensional Semantics of Evaluative Adverbs provides a multidimensional analysis for the lexical semantics of evaluative adverbs: nonfactive evaluative adverbs trigger a conventional implicature, whereas factive evaluative adverbs not only trigger a conventional implicature but also a conventional presupposition. This analysis proves to be more advantageous than existing analysis in terms of empirical coverage and explanatory power. With the case of evaluative adverbs, the book demonstrates how secondary meanings (e.g. conventional presuppositions, conventional implicatures) interact with primary meanings (i.e. main assertion, or at-issue content). For the first time, a three-dimensional formal language of conventional implicatures and conventional presuppositions is implemented and applied to derive the right truth conditions of sentences with evaluative adverbs and predict their projection behaviors. With a cross-linguistic perspective (focusing on German, English and Mandarin Chinese) and using corpus- and psycholinguistic methods, the book also offers new perspectives on the syntax/semantics/pragmatics of adverbials.
BibTeX: @book{Liu2012, author = {Mingya Liu}, title = {Multidimensional Semantics of Evaluative Adverbs}, publisher = {Brill}, year = {2012} }
Lorson, A., Cummins, C. and Rohde, H.	When objecting to presupposed content comes easily [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2019	Vol. 54Proceedings of the 23rd workshop on the semantics and pragmatics of dialogue. London: SemDial, pp. 60	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: New content can be introduced into dialogue via presupposition as well as by assertion, but on traditional accounts presupposed information is expected to be less addressable in the subsequent dialogue. An alternative approach is to argue that addressability is more closely connected to whether content is at-issue with respect to the current Question Under Discussion. This paper investigates which of these factors is dominant. We report the results of a dialogue-based experiment designed to test whether and how false at-issue content is responded to in an ongoing discourse, and whether this is affected by its status as asserted or presupposed. Our findings suggest that when material is at-issue it can be challenged directly, independently of whether it is presupposed or asserted. However, relevant information introduced by a presupposition was found to be more likely to escape the participants’ attention.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Lorson2019, author = {Lorson, Alexandra and Cummins, Chris and Rohde, Hannah}, title = {When objecting to presupposed content comes easily}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 23rd workshop on the semantics and pragmatics of dialogue. London: SemDial}, year = {2019}, volume = {54}, pages = {60}, url = {http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ hrohde/papers/LorsonCumminsRohde.2019.pdf} }
Marty, P. and Romoli, J.	Presuppositions, implicatures, and contextual equivalence [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021	Natural Language Semantics Vol. 29, pp. 229-280	article	DOI
Abstract: Maximize Presupposition! (MP), as originally proposed in Heim (Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung, pp. 487–535, 1991) and developed in subsequent works, offers an account of the otherwise mysterious unassertability of a variety of sentences. At the core of MP is the idea that speakers are urged to use a sentence ψ over a sentence ϕ if ψ contributes the same new information as ϕ, yet carries a stronger presupposition. While MP has been refined in many ways throughout the years, most (if not all) of its formulations have retained this characterisation of the MP-competition. Recently, however, the empirical adequacy of this characterisation has been questioned in light of certain newly discovered cases that are infelicitous, despite meeting MP-competition conditions. This has led some researchers to broaden the scope of MP, extending it to competition between sentences which are not contextually equivalent (Spector and Sudo in Linguistics and Philosophy 40(5):473–517, 2017) and whose presuppositions are not satisfied in the context (Anvari in Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 28, pp. 711–726, 2018; Manuscript, IJN-ENS, 2019). In this paper, we present a body of evidence showing that these formulations of MP are sometimes too liberal, sometimes too restrictive: they overgenerate infelicity for a variety of felicitous cases while leaving the infelicity of minimally different cases unaccounted for. We propose an alternative, implicature-based approach stemming from Magri (PhD dissertation, MIT, 2009), Meyer (PhD dissertation, MIT, 2013), and Marty (PhD dissertation, MIT, 2017), which reintroduces contextual equivalence and presupposition satisfaction in some form through the notion of relevance. This approach is shown to account for the classical and most of the novel cases. Yet some of the latter remain problematic for this approach as well. We end the paper with a systematic comparison of the different approaches to MP and MP-like phenomena, covering both the classical and the novel cases. All in all, the issue of how to properly restrict the competition for MP-like phenomena remains an important challenge for all accounts in the literature.
BibTeX: @article{Marty2021, author = {Paul Marty and Jacopo Romoli}, title = {Presuppositions, implicatures, and contextual equivalence}, journal = {Natural Language Semantics}, year = {2021}, volume = {29}, pages = {229-280}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-021-09176-0} }
Matthewson, L., Davis, H. and Rullmann, H.	Evidentials as epistemic modals: Evidence from St’´at’imcets [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2007	The Linguistic Variation Yearbook 7, pp. 201-254	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: This paper argues that evidential clitics in St’át’imcets (a.k.a. Lillooet; Northern Interior Salish) introduce quantification over possible worlds and must be analyzed as epistemic modals. We thus add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that the functions of encoding information source and encoding epistemic modality are not necessarily distinct. However, St’át’imcets evidentials differ from English modal auxiliaries not only in that the former explicitly encode the source of the speaker’s evidence, but also in that they do not encode differences in quantificational force. We therefore argue that distinguishing quantificational strength is not an intrinsic property of modal elements. With respect to the syntax-semantics interface, we argue on the basis of data from St’át’imcets against attempts to establish a universally fixed position for evidentials in the functional hierarchy. We conclude that evidentiality is not a homogeneous category, either semantically or syntactically. On the semantic side, cross-linguistically and even within a single language, elements which encode information source may or may not fall into the category of epistemic modals (as already argued by Faller 2002, to appear). On the syntactic side, evidentials in most languages do not form grammaticalized systems and are not confined to a single position in the functional hierarchy. We suggest that evidentiality per se is a ‘parasitic’ category, since evidential meanings may be associated with any of the principal functional heads in the IP domain: mood, tense, or aspect.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Matthewson2007, author = {Lisa Matthewson and Henry Davis and Hotze Rullmann}, title = {Evidentials as epistemic modals: Evidence from St’´at’imcets}, booktitle = {The Linguistic Variation Yearbook 7}, publisher = {John Benjamins}, year = {2007}, pages = {201-254}, url = {https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/DlhZTdkZ/Evidentials as epistemic modals.pdf} }
Mayol, L. and Castroviejo, E.	Projective meaning and implicature cancellation [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of the Workshop on Projective Meaning, ESSLLI 2011	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: It has been a matter of recent debate what is the relationship between different levels of meaning and what interactions between them are possible (Potts 2005, Roberts et al. 2008). This paper deals with these interactions as far as implicature cancellation is concerned. We aim to show that canceling amounts to addressing a new question under discussion, which predicts that only at-issue meaning, but not projective meaning (Simons et al., 2010) can be a meaning canceler, and which restricts cancellations to contexts where adding a new QUD is the right discourse move.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Mayol2011, author = {Laia Mayol and Elena Castroviejo}, title = {Projective meaning and implicature cancellation}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Projective Meaning, ESSLLI 2011}, year = {2011}, url = {http://elena-castroviejo-miro.cat/Papers/mayol-castroviejo-proceedings-final.pdf} }
Mayol, L. and Castroviejo, E.	Contrastive topics and implicature cancellation [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	19th ICL Papers	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the so-called ‘Problem of the Last Answer’, which arises in the context of the research on the semantics of Contrastive Topic, on the one hand, and on the distribution of the presupposition trigger too, on the other hand. Our goal is to argue that we can find a simple and elegant answer to this problem if we take into consideration more general constraints on implicature cancellation.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Mayol2013a, author = {Laia Mayol and Elena Castroviejo}, title = {Contrastive topics and implicature cancellation}, booktitle = {19th ICL Papers}, year = {2013}, url = {https://www.cil19.org/uploads/documents/Contrastive_topics_and_implicature_cancellation.pdf} }
Mayol, L. and Castroviejo, E.	Evaluative adverbs in questions: a comparison between French and Catalan [BibTeX]	2014	Vol. 46(2)Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society [CLS46], pp. 143-158	inproceedings
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Mayol2014, author = {Laia Mayol and Elena Castroviejo}, title = {Evaluative adverbs in questions: a comparison between French and Catalan}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society [CLS46]}, year = {2014}, volume = {46}, number = {2}, pages = {143-158} }
McCready, E.	Emotive equilibria [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	Linguistics and Philosophy Vol. 35(3), pp. 243-283	article	DOI
Abstract: Natural language contains many expressions with underspecified emotive content. This paper proposes a way to resolve such underspecification. Nonmonotonic inference over a knowledge base is used to derive an expected interpretation for emotive expressions in a particular context. This ‘normal’ meaning is then taken to influence the hearer’s expectations about probable interpretations, and, because of these probable interpretations, the decisions of the speaker about when use of underspecified emotive terms is appropriate.
BibTeX: @article{McCready2012a, author = {Elin McCready}, title = {Emotive equilibria}, journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy}, publisher = {Springer}, year = {2012}, volume = {35}, number = {3}, pages = {243--283}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-012-9118-9} }
Bekki, D. and McCready, E.	CI via DTS [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2015	New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence JSAI-isAI 2014	incollection	DOI
Abstract: It has been observed that conventionally implicated content interacts with at-issue content in a number of different ways. This paper focuses on the existence of anaphoric links between content of these two types, something disallowed by the system of Potts (2005), the original locus of work on these issues. The problem of characterizing this interaction has been considered by a number of authors. This paper proposes a new system for understanding it in the framework of Dependent Type Semantics. It is shown that the resulting system provides a good characterization of how “cross-dimensional” anaphoric links can be supported from a proof-theoretic perspective.
BibTeX: @incollection{Murata2015, author = {Daisuke Bekki and Elin McCready}, title = {CI via DTS}, booktitle = {New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence JSAI-isAI 2014}, publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg}, year = {2015}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48119-6} }
Murray, S.E.	Evidentiality and the Structure of Speech Acts [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2010	School: Rutgers University	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: Many languages grammatically mark evidentiality, i.e., the source of information. In assertions, evidentials indicate the source of information of the speaker while in questions they indicate the expected source of information of the addressee. This dissertation examines the semantics and pragmatics of evidentiality and illocutionary mood, set within formal theories of meaning and discourse. The empirical focus is the evidential system of Cheyenne (Algonquian: Montana), which is analyzed based on several years of fieldwork by the author. In Cheyenne, evidentials are part of the illocutionary mood paradigm. Based on this grammatical system and crosslinguistic data in the literature, I propose a new theory of evidentials. I argue that evidentials contribute not-at-issue content, which cannot be directly challenged or denied. This content is added directly to the common ground, without negotiation. In contrast, at-issue content, the main point of a sentence, is proposed to the common ground, up for negotiation. This analysis of evidentials implies a more articulated theory of assertion and other speech acts. In particular, I argue that all speech acts are structured into three components: presentation of the at-issue proposition, a non-negotiable update that individual, modal, and propositional discourse referents. The distinction between atissue and not-at-issue information comes out as an instance of grammatical centering in the modal domain. The presentation of the at-issue proposition is modeled as the introduction of a propositional discourse referent. This predicts that only the at-issue proposition can be referred to in subsequent discourse, and the non-challengeability of the evidential falls out as a special case of propositional anaphora. The proposed analysis can be extended to evidentials and related phenomena in other languages. While there are real crosslinguistic differences in the behavior of evidentials, there are also many commonalities. The proposed analysis captures the properties that all evidential systems share, but is fine-grained enough to account for variation. On this analysis, evidentials crosslinguistically form a natural semantic class. directly restricts the common ground, and a negotiable update that imposes structure on the common ground. I implement this proposal in an update semantics with
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Murray2010, author = {Sarah E. Murray}, title = {Evidentiality and the Structure of Speech Acts}, school = {Rutgers University}, year = {2010}, url = {https://ling.rutgers.edu/images/dissertations/Murray-Thesis_Rutgers-2010.pdf} }
Murray, S.E.	Varieties of update [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2014	Semantics and Pragmatics Vol. 7	article	DOI
Abstract: This paper discusses three potential varieties of update: updates to the common ground, structuring updates, and updates that introduce discourse referents. These different types of update are used to model different aspects of natural language phenomena. Not-at-issue information directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary mood of a sentence structures the context. Other updates introduce discourse referents of various types, including propositional discourse referents for at-issue information. Distinguishing these types of update allows a unified treatment of a broad range of phenomena, including the grammatical evidentials found in Cheyenne (Algonquian) as well as English evidential parentheticals, appositives, and mood marking. An update semantics that can formalize all of these varieties of update is given, integrating the different kinds of semantic contributions into a single representation of meaning.
BibTeX: @article{Murray2014, author = {Sarah E. Murray}, title = {Varieties of update}, journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics}, publisher = {Linguistic Society of America}, year = {2014}, volume = {7}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.2} }
Onea, E. and Beaver, D.	Hungarian focus is not exhausted [BibTeX]	2010	Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) XIX, 2009	inproceedings	DOI
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Onea2010, author = {Edgar Onea and David Beaver}, title = {Hungarian focus is not exhausted}, booktitle = {Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) XIX, 2009}, publisher = {CLC Publications}, year = {2010}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v19i0.2524} }
Peterson, T.R.G.	Epistemic Modality and Evidentiality in Gitksan at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2010	School: University of British Columbia	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: The aim of this dissertation is to provide an empirically driven, theoretically informed investigation of how speakers of Gitksan, a Tsimshianic language spoken in the northwest coast of Canada, express knowledge about the world around them. There are three main goals that motivate this investigation, summarized below: (i.) To provide the first detailed description of the evidential and modal system in Gitksan. (ii.) To provide a formal semantic and pragmatic account of this system that adequately explains the meanings of the modals and evidentials, as well as how they are used in discourse. (iii.) To identify and examine the specific properties the Gitksan evidential/modal system brings to bear on current theories of semantics and pragmatics, as well as the consequences this analysis has on the study of modality and evidentiality cross-linguistically. In addition to documenting the evidential and modal meanings in Gitksan, I test and work through a variety of theoretical tools from the literature designed to investigate evidentiality and modality in a language. This begins by determining what level of meaning the individual evidentials in Gitksan operate on. The current state of research into the connection between evidentiality and epistemic modality has identified two different types of evidentials defined by the level of meaning they operate on: propositional and illocutionary evidentials. These two types correspond to a distinction between modal evidentials and non-modal evidentials respectively. I show that Gitksan has both modal and non-evidentials. This leads to an analysis where the Gitksan modal evidentials are treated as a specialized type of epistemic modals, and the non-modal evidentials are sentential force specifiers. I also identify various features of the evidential system that bring specific issues to bear upon current theories of the semantics and pragmatics of modality. This has four outcomes: first, I present a novel analysis of variable modal force in modals with fixed quantification: variable modal force in Gitksan modal evidentials is determined by the ordering source. Secondly, I discuss Conjectural Questions: when a modal evidential is added to a question it reduces the interrogative force of the question. This follows from the modal semantics of evidentials. Thirdly, I introduce the notion of Pragmatic blocking: modal and non-modal evidentials interact in discourse contexts, and implicate a speaker’s attitude towards the evidence they have for a proposition. And fourthly, I develop the first formal analysis of mirativity and non-literal uses of evidentials, analyzing them both as cases of conversational implicature.
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Peterson2010, author = {Tyler Roy Gösta Peterson}, title = {Epistemic Modality and Evidentiality in Gitksan at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface}, school = {University of British Columbia}, year = {2010}, url = {https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jAyZDdkM/Dissertation-filed.pdf} }
Potts, C.	The Logic of Conventional Implicatures [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2005		book
Abstract: This book revives the study of conventional implicatures in natural language semantics. The label ‘conventional implicature’ dates back to H. Paul Grice’s early work on the foundations of linguistic semantics and pragmatics. Since its introduction, it has seen many diverse applications, but it has never enjoyed a stable place in linguistic theory. This book seeks to change that. Grice’s original discussion is used as a key into two presently understudied areas of natural language: supplements (appositives, parentheticals, utterance modifiers) and expressives (epithets, honorifics). The account of both depends on a multidimensional theory in which individual sentences can express more than one independent meaning. The theory is logically and intuitively compositional, and it minimally extends a familiar kind of intensional logic, thereby providing an adaptable tool for general semantic analysis. The result is a linguistic theory that is accessible not only to linguists of all stripes, but also to philosophers of language, logicians, and computer scientists who have linguistic applications in mind.
BibTeX: @book{Potts2005, author = {Christopher Potts}, title = {The Logic of Conventional Implicatures}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, year = {2005} }
Qing, C., Goodman, N.D. and Lassiter, D.	A rational speech-act model of projective content. [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2016	CogSci	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: Certain content of a linguistic construction can project when the construction is embedded in entailment-canceling environments. For example, the conclusion that John smoked in the past from the utterance John stopped smoking still holds for John didn’t stop smoking, in which the original utterance is embedded under negation. There are two main approaches to account for projection phenomena. The semantic approach adds restrictions of the common ground to the conventional meaning. The pragmatic approach tries to derive projection from general conversational principles. In this paper we build a probabilistic model of language understanding in which the listener jointly infers the world state and what common ground the speaker has assumed. We take change-of-state verbs as an example and model its projective content under negation. Under certain assumptions, the model predicts the projective behavior and its interaction with the question under discussion (QUD), without any special semantic treatment of projective content.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Qing2016, author = {Qing, Ciyang and Goodman, Noah D and Lassiter, Daniel}, title = {A rational speech-act model of projective content.}, booktitle = {CogSci}, year = {2016}, url = {https://cogsci.mindmodeling.org/2016/papers/0200/index.html} }
Rawlins, K.	(Un)conditionals [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Natural Language Semantics Vol. 21(2), pp. 111-178	article	DOI
Abstract: I give an account of the compositional semantics of unconditionals (e.g. Whoever goes to the party, it will be fun) that explains their relationship to if -conditionals in the Lewis/Kratzer/Heim tradition. Unconditionals involve an alternative-denoting adjunct (in English in particular, a question-denoting adjunct) that supplies domain restrictions pointwise (in the sense of Hamblin) to a main-clause operator such as a modal. The differences from if -clauses follow from the structure of the adjuncts; both are conditionals in the Lewisian sense. In the course of treating unconditionals, I provide a concrete implementation of conditionals where conditional adjuncts in general are a species of correlative, and show what detaching this hypothesis from if involves.
BibTeX: @article{Rawlins2013, author = {Kyle Rawlins}, title = {(Un)conditionals}, journal = {Natural Language Semantics}, publisher = {Springer}, year = {2013}, volume = {21}, number = {2}, pages = {111--178}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-012-9087-0} }
Renans, A.	Projective meaning of only – evidence from Polish [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: The status of the prejacent of only is still a topic of linguistic debates. The reported experiments and observations are supposed to provide new data and evidence. Section 2 discusses existing theories of the meaning of only. Section 3 reports on the experiments on the semantics of tylko, which is assumed to be a Polish counterpart of English only. The experiments show clearly that the prejacent of tylko projects out of negation (section 3.1) and counterfactual if-clauses (section 3.2.) However, tylko does not project so easily out of indicative if-clauses (section 3.3.) In section 4, I discuss some additional tests which are designed to detect presupposition and I implement them to sentences with tylko. It occurs that the results of some of them in particular the Hey, wait a minute-test (section 4.1) and Suspending the Prejacent (section 4.2) suggest that the prejacent of tylko behaves in a similar way to assertion. Moreover, I show that the semantics of only differs from the semantics of tylko.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Renans2011, author = {Agata Renans}, title = {Projective meaning of only – evidence from Polish}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning}, year = {2011}, url = {https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.646.290&rep=rep1&type=pdf} }
Roberts, C., Simons, M., Beaver, D. and Tonhauser, J.	Presupposition, Conventional Implicature, and Beyond: A unified account of projection [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2009	Proceedings of the Workshop on Presupposition	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: We define a notion of projective meaning which encompasses both classical presuppositions and phenomena which are usually regarded as non-presuppositional but which also display projection behavior—Horn’s assertorically inert entailments, conventional implicatures (both Grice’s and Potts’) and some conversational implicatures. We argue that the central feature of all projective meanings is that they are not-at-issue, defined as a relation to the question under discussion. Other properties differentiate various sub-classes of projective meanings, one of them the class of presuppositions according to Stalnaker. This principled taxonomy predicts differences in behavior unexpected on other models among the various conventional triggers and conversational implicatures, while holding promise for a general, explanatory account of projection which applies to all the types of meanings considered.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Roberts2009, author = {Craige Roberts and Mandy Simons and David Beaver and Judith Tonhauser}, title = {Presupposition, Conventional Implicature, and Beyond: A unified account of projection}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Presupposition}, year = {2009}, url = {https://judith-tonhauser.github.io/files/roberts-etal2009.pdf} }
Roberts, C.	Accommodation in a language game [BibTeX]	2015	A Companion to David Lewis, pp. 345-366	incollection	URL
BibTeX: @incollection{Roberts2015, author = {Craige Roberts}, title = {Accommodation in a language game}, booktitle = {A Companion to David Lewis}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, year = {2015}, pages = {345-366}, url = {https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/DZiMDNjY/Accommodation in a language game.pdf} }
Romoli, J.	Soft but Strong. Neg-raising, Soft triggers, and Exhaustification [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	School: Harvard University	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: In this thesis, I focus on scalar implicatures, presuppositions and their connections. In chapter 2, I propose a scalar implicature-based account of neg-raising inferences, standardly analyzed as a presuppositional phenomenon (Gajewski 2005, 2007). I show that an approach based on scalar implicatures can straightforwardly account for the differences and similarities between neg-raising predicates and presuppositional triggers. In chapters 3 and 4, I extend this account to "soft" presuppositions, a class of presuppositions that are easily suspendable (Abusch 2002, 2010). I show how such account can explain the differences and similarities between this class of presuppositions and other presuppositions on one hand, and scalar implicatures on the other. Furthermore, I discuss various consequences that it has with respect to the behavior of soft presuppositions in quantificational sentences, their interactions with scalar implicatures, and their effects on the licensing of negative polarity items. In chapter 5, I show that by looking at the interaction between presuppositions and scalar implicatures we can solve a notorious problem which arises with conditional sentences like (1) (Soames 1982, Karttunen and Peters 1979). The main issue with (1) is that it is intuitively not presuppositional and this is not predicted by any major theory of presupposition projection. (1) I'll go, if you go too. Finally, I explore in more detail the question of which alternatives should we consider in the computation of scalar implicatures (chapter 6). Traditionally, the answer has been to consider the subset of logically stronger alternatives than the assertion. Recently, however, arguments have been put forward in the literature for including also logically independent alternatives. I support this move by presenting some novel arguments in its favor and I show that while allowing new alternatives makes the right predictions in various cases, it also causes an under- and an over-generation problem. I propose a solution to each problem, based on a novel recursive algorithm for checking which alternatives are to be considered in the computation of scalar implicatures and the role of focus (Rooth 1992, Fox and Katzir 2011).
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Romoli2012, author = {Jacopo Romoli}, title = {Soft but Strong. Neg-raising, Soft triggers, and Exhaustification}, school = {Harvard University}, year = {2012}, url = {https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/soft-strong-neg-raising-triggers-exhaustification/docview/1175223796/se-2?accountid=9783} }
van Rooij, R.	Strengthening conditional presuppositions [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2007	Journal of Semantics Vol. 24, pp. 289-304	article	DOI
Abstract: In this paper it will be shown how conditional presuppositions can be strengthened to unconditional ones if we assume that the antecedent and consequent of a conditional presupposition are independent of one another. Our notion of independence is very weak, and based on Lewis' (1988) notion of orthogonality of questions. It will be argued that our way of strengthening these presuppositions does not give rise to some wrong predictions Geurts (1996) argued other proposed strengthening accounts do.
BibTeX: @article{Rooij2007, author = {Robert van Rooij}, title = {Strengthening conditional presuppositions}, journal = {Journal of Semantics}, year = {2007}, volume = {24}, pages = {289-304}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffm007} }
Rubinstein, A.	Projective signals of weak necessity modals [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: This paper investigates the hypothesis that the semantics of weak necessity modals like should/ought to includes a conventional signal requiring departure from common ground assumptions in the evaluation of the modal claim. I investigate the properties of this signal, suggesting that it is a type of meaning that is projective, not at-issue, antibackgrounding in a sense, and grammatically determined. Thus, it is most similar to a type of presupposition that is nonetheless not intuitively pre-supposed. Comparing the proposed weakness signal to an evidential signal with similar projective properties that has been argued to accompany epistemic modals, I speculate that the two signals have independent sources.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Rubinstein2011, author = {Aynat Rubinstein}, title = {Projective signals of weak necessity modals}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning}, year = {2011}, url = {https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.646.290&rep=rep1&type=pdf} }
Simons, M., Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D. and Roberts, C.	What projects and why [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2010	Vol. 20Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), pp. 309-327	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: Projection is widely used as a diagnostic for presupposition, but many expression types yield projection even though they do not have standard properties of presupposition, for example appositives, expressives, and honorifics (Potts 2005). While it is possible to analyze projection piecemeal, clearly a unitary explanation is to be preferred. Yet we show that standard explanations of projective behavior (common ground based theories, anaphoric theories, and multi-dimensional theories) do not extend to the full range of triggers. Instead, we propose an alternative explanation based on the following claim, which is intended to apply to all content which occurs in embedded contexts: Meanings project IFF they are not at-issue, where at-issueness is defined in terms of the Roberts’ (1996) discourse theory. Thus, and despite their apparent heterogeneity, projective meaning triggers emerge as a natural class on the basis of the not at-issue status of their projective inference.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Simons2010, author = {Mandy Simons and Judith Tonhauser and David Beaver and Craige Roberts}, title = {What projects and why}, booktitle = {Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT)}, publisher = {CLC Publications}, year = {2010}, volume = {20}, pages = {309-327}, url = {https://judith-tonhauser.github.io/files/simons-etal-2010.pdf} }
Simons, M., Beaver, D., Roberts, C. and Tonhauser, J.	The Best Question: Explaining the Projection Behavior of Factives [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2017	Discourse Processes Vol. 54(3), pp. 187-206	article	DOI
Abstract: This article deals with projection in factive sentences. The article first challenges standard assumptions by presenting a series of detailed observations about the interpretations of factive sentences in context, showing that what implication projects, if any, is quite variable and that projection is tightly constrained by prosodic and contextual information about the alternatives under consideration. The article then proposes an account which accommodates the variability of the data and sensitivity to contextual alternatives. The account is formulated within a modified version of Roberts 1996/2012 question-based model of discourse.
BibTeX: @article{Simons2017, author = {Mandy Simons and David Beaver and Craige Roberts and Judith Tonhauser}, title = {The Best Question: Explaining the Projection Behavior of Factives}, journal = {Discourse Processes}, year = {2017}, volume = {54}, number = {3}, pages = {187-206}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2016.1150660} }
Smirnova, A.	Evidentiality and mood: Grammatical expressions of epistemic modality in Bulgarian [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	School: The Ohio State University	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: This dissertation is a case study of two grammatical categories, evidentiality and mood. I argue that evidentiality and mood are grammatical expressions of epistemic modality and have an epistemic modal component as part of their meanings. While the empirical foundation for this work is data from Bulgarian, my analysis has a number of empirical and theoretical consequences for the previous work on evidentiality and mood in the formal semantics literature. Evidentiality is traditionally analyzed as a grammatical category that encodes information sources (Aikhenvald 2004). I show that the Bulgarian evidential has richer meaning: not only does it express information source, but also it has a temporal and a modal component. With respect to the information source, the Bulgarian evidential is compatible with a variety of evidential meanings, i.e. direct, inferential, and reportative, as long as the speaker has concrete perceivable evidence (as opposed to evidence based on a mental activity). With respect to epistemic commitment, the construction has different felicity conditions depending on the context: the speaker must be committed to the truth of the proposition in the scope of the evidential in a direct/inferential evidential context, but not in a reportative context. Finally, the distribution of the evidential is sensitive to the temporal relations specified in the context. In the previous literature, the Bulgarian evidential is analyzed as encoding indirect sources of information; no mention is made of its temporal meaning (Izvorski 1997, Sauerland and Schenner 2007). I propose a uniform semantic analysis of the Bulgarian evidential, which incorporates both a temporal and a modal component, and accounts for the full range of evidential meanings. The central aspect of the analysis is the assumption that the proposition in the scope of the evidential is evaluated with respect to different sets of worlds, depending on the discourse context: the belief worlds of the speaker in inferential/direct evidential contexts, and the belief worlds of the original reporter in reportative contexts. My analysis of mood explains the distribution of the subjunctive and the indicative in Bulgarian as being dependent on the epistemic commitment of the attitude holder (cf. Giannakidou 1998). Previous analyses attribute mood distribution to semantic properties of the selecting verb alone (cf. Farkas 1992, Villalta 2008). These analyses cannot be extended to Bulgarian, where the distribution of mood is sensitive not only to the semantics of matrix verbs, but also to context. This is particularly clear in cases when the same verb can select both the subjunctive and the indicative, and the choice of mood correlates with the attitude holder’s epistemic commitment. The indicative is selected iff the attitude holder is strongly committed to the truth/falsity of the proposition expressed by the complement clause. The subjunctive is selected iff the attitude holder has a weaker epistemic commitment. My formal analysis uses the tools from the analysis of modals (Kratzer 1979) and specifies how the meaning of the matrix propositional attitude verb interacts with the meaning of mood in the embedded clause. This is the first formal semantic analysis of mood in Bulgarian.
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Smirnova2011, author = {Anastasia Smirnova}, title = {Evidentiality and mood: Grammatical expressions of epistemic modality in Bulgarian}, school = {The Ohio State University}, year = {2011}, url = {http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306917645} }
Smirnova, A.	Evidentiality in Bulgarian: Epistemic modality and temporal relations [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	Journal of Semantics Vol. 30(4), pp. 479-532	article	DOI
Abstract: This article presents a formal semantic analysis of the Bulgarian evidential. The analysis is motivated by a number of facts that have gone unnoticed in the literature on evidentiality in Bulgarian and which cannot be explained by previous analyses (Izvorski 1997; Sauerland & Schenner 2007; Koev 2011). First, I show that the same evidential construction in Bulgarian can express direct, reportative and inferential information sources. These data challenge the current analysis of the Bulgarian evidential as indirect (Izvorski 1997), and show that in some languages a single evidential morpheme can express both direct and indirect information sources (contra Willett 1988; Aikhenvald 2004). Second, I show that the Bulgarian evidential expresses temporal meaning: it functions as a relative tense. Finally, while I retain the insights of Izvorski’s modal analysis, I substantially change the modal component to account for reports of false information in reportative contexts (I analyze them as de dicto reports). Ultimately, I argue that the evidential construction in Bulgarian has a tripartite meaning: it encodes information source, temporality and epistemic modality. This article contributes to the understanding of the semantics of evidentials cross-linguistically (cf. Faller 2002; McCready & Ogata 2007; Matthewson et al. 2007) by showing how the interaction of the modal and the temporal component affects the distribution and meaning of evidentials in discourse.
BibTeX: @article{Smirnova2012, author = {Anastasia Smirnova}, title = {Evidentiality in Bulgarian: Epistemic modality and temporal relations}, journal = {Journal of Semantics}, year = {2012}, volume = {30}, number = {4}, pages = {479-532}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffs017} }
Smith, E.A. and Hall, K.	Projection Diversity: Experimental Evidence [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: This paper presents the results of an experiment that tests a number of assumptions and predictions about projection behavior. We find that meanings hypothesized to be projective do in fact project, including projective meanings other than presuppositions. We also find that projective meanings display a great deal of heterogeneity, with some projecting much more than others and very few showing entailment behavior that is as robust as the entailment of assertions in a basic context. The degree of projection found with various triggers in this study is not consistent with many of the past theories of projective meanings, as discussed in section 4. The first section presents the relevant theories and background information, the second section presents the experimental method, and the third section presents the results.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Smith2011, author = {E. Allyn Smith and Kathleen Hall}, title = {Projection Diversity: Experimental Evidence}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning}, year = {2011}, url = {https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.646.290&rep=rep1&type=pdf} }
Stevens, J., de Marneffe, M.-C., Speer, S.R. and Tonhauser, J.	Rational use of prosody predicts projection in manner adverb utterances. [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2017	CogSci	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: Speakers can be taken to be committed to utterance content even when that content is contributed in the scope of an entailment-canceling operator, like negation (e.g., Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, 1990). We develop a probabilistic model of this phenomenon, called ‘projection’, that relies on the prosodic realization of utterances. We synthesize existing theoretical claims about prosody, information structure and projection into a model that assumes a rational speaker (Frank & Goodman, 2012) who produces utterances with prosodic melodies that can signal which utterance content she is committed to. Predictions of the probabilistic model are compared to the responses of an experiment designed to test the effect of prosody on projection in manner adverb utterances. Key behaviors of the model are borne out empirically, and the quantitative fit is surprisingly good given that the model has only one free parameter. Our findings lend support to analyses of projection that are sensitive to the information structure of utterances (e.g., Simons, Beaver, Roberts, & Tonhauser, 2017).
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Stevens2017a, author = {Stevens, Jon and de Marneffe, Marie-Catherine and Speer, Shari R and Tonhauser, Judith}, title = {Rational use of prosody predicts projection in manner adverb utterances.}, booktitle = {CogSci}, year = {2017}, url = {https://cogsci.mindmodeling.org/2017/papers/0221/index.html} }
Tawilapakul, U.	Counter-Expectation in Thai [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	School: University of York	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: This study is dedicated to the reinvestigation of the role of the particle lɛɛw45 in Thai. It raises speculations over the conventional claims according to which lɛɛw45 plays a role in temporality as a perfective aspect marker (Kanchanawan, 1978; Boonyapatipark, 1983; among others). The reappraisal of the role of lɛɛw45 in this study, which is based on the use of it in present day Thai, offers an argument against these claims. The addition of lɛɛw45 to a sentence is not mainly aimed at temporal effects. When it appears in a sentence, lɛɛw45 does not necessarily denote the perfective aspect of the event. Moreover, it can be omitted in the sentence in which perfectivity is already inherited through the lexical aspect of the verb and the temporal structure of the predicate. Lɛɛw45 in fact plays a role as a marker of counter-expectation. It represents a previous expectation about the subject and its opposition to the asserted proposition. Examining the nature of lɛɛw45's implications thoroughly, the study has found that even though the definiteness of the subject behaves like a standard presupposition, the implicated expectation does not project in all cases. This is revealed in the results from Tonhauser et al.’s (2013) projection tests. Lɛɛw45 is context-sensitive and imposes a Strong Contextual Felicity constraint. Nonetheless, it is actually not bound to Obligatory Local Effect and its presence in the context where the projective contents are not entailed is also felicitous. Counter-expectations also involve coherence and relevance, which are determined by the interrelationship between common ground, context, and focus. The asserted proposition is required to correspond to the common ground knowledge and context designated by the expected proposition. Additionally, the expression and interpretation of lɛɛw45's counter-expectations rely on the association of lɛɛw45 with the focused element in its scope. In a particular case, the common ground knowledge, context, and focus can be identified with the assistance of Question Under Discussion (Roberts 1996, 2012). The mechanism also accounts for the production and interpretation processes proceeding in accordance with the conversational moves.
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Tawilapakul2013, author = {Tawilapakul, Upsorn}, title = {Counter-Expectation in Thai}, school = {University of York}, year = {2013}, url = {https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9560/} }
Thomas, G.	Nominal tense and temporal implicatures: evidence from Mbyá [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2014	Natural Language Semantics Vol. 22(4), pp. 357-412	article	DOI
Abstract: In this paper, I discuss the distribution and the interpretation of the temporal suffix -kue in Mbyá, a Guaraní language that is closely related to Paraguayan Guaraní. This suffix is attested both inside noun phrases and inside clauses. Interestingly, its nominal uses give rise to inferences that are unattested in its clausal uses. These inferences were first identified in Paraguayan Guaraní by Tonhauser (PhD thesis, 2006; Language 83:831–869, 2007), who called them the existence property and the change of state property. Tonhauser further argued that these properties are built into the lexical entry of the nominal temporal marker -kue. By contrast, I argue that -kue denotes a relative past tense both in its nominal and clausal uses, and that the existence and change of state properties are pragmatic inferences that arise from the interaction of the literal meaning of -kue with general constraints on the interpretation of noun phrases, notably constraints on the topicality of the time of evaluation of noun phrases. This allows me to maintain a uniform analysis of -kue across its nominal uses and its clausal uses. The analysis of -kue in Mbyá is relevant to a number of current debates on the expression of tense crosslinguistically. Firstly, the existence of relative tenses has sometimes been called into question. Klein (Time in language, 1994) notably argues that relative tenses are actually combinations of tense with the perfect aspect. Others have argued that there exist true relative tenses in certain languages (see e.g. Bohnemeyer, NLLT 1–38, 2013). I argue that facts of Mbyá support the latter view. Secondly, Klein (1994) famously defined tenses as relations between topic times and the time of utterance. I argue, on the other hand, that relative tenses only denote relations between times, and that the topicality or non-topicality of their temporal arguments depends on their context of use, including their syntactic environment. Thirdly, this paper contributes to debates on the nature and reality of nominal tenses (see Nordlinger and Sadler, Language 80:776–806, 2004; Lecarme, In: Binnick (ed) The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, 2012), by arguing that tense in Mbyá is a genuinely nominal category, in the sense that temporal functional projections are part of the extended projection of the noun phrase.
BibTeX: @article{Thomas2014, author = {Guillaume Thomas}, title = {Nominal tense and temporal implicatures: evidence from Mbyá}, journal = {Natural Language Semantics}, publisher = {Springer}, year = {2014}, volume = {22}, number = {4}, pages = {357--412}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-014-9108-2} }
Thomason, R.H., Stone, M. and DeVault, D.	Enlightened update: A computational architecture for presupposition and other pragmatic phenomena [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2006	Talk	misc	URL
Abstract: We relate the theory of presupposition accommodation to a computational framework for reasoning in conversation. We understand presuppositions as private commitments the speaker makes in using an utterance but expects the listener to recognize based on mutual information. On this understanding, the conversation can move forward not just through the positive effects of interlocutors’ utterances but also from the retrospective insight interlocutors gain about one anothers’ mental states from observing what they do. Our title, ENLIGHTENED UPDATE, highlights such cases. Our approach fleshes out two key principles: that interpretation is a form of intention recognition; and that intentions are complex informational structures, which specify commitments to conditions and to outcomes as well as to actions. We present a formalization and implementation of these principles for a simple conversational agent, and draw on this case study to argue that pragmatic reasoning is holistic in character, continuous with common-sense reasoning about collaborative activities, and most effectively characterized by associating specific, reliable interpretive constraints directly with grammatical forms. In showing how to make such claims precise and to develop theories that respect them, we illustrate the general place of computation in the cognitive science of language.
BibTeX: @misc{Thomason2006, author = {Richmond H. Thomason and Matthew Stone and David DeVault}, title = {Enlightened update: A computational architecture for presupposition and other pragmatic phenomena}, year = {2006}, note = {Talk at the OSU Workshop on Presupposition Accommodation, the Ohio State Pragmatics Initiative, 2006}, url = {https://people.cs.rutgers.edu/ mdstone/pubs/osu06.pdf} }
Tonhauser, J.	Diagnosing (not-) at-issue content [BibTeX]	2012	Proceedings of Semantics of Under-represented Languages of the Americas (SULA) Vol. 6, pp. 239-254	article	URL
BibTeX: @article{Tonhauser2012, author = {Judith Tonhauser}, title = {Diagnosing (not-) at-issue content}, journal = {Proceedings of Semantics of Under-represented Languages of the Americas (SULA)}, year = {2012}, volume = {6}, pages = {239--254}, url = {https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/tonhauser.1/papers/tonhauser-SULA6.pdf} }
Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D., Simons, M. and Roberts, C.	Towards a Taxonomy of Projective Content [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Language Vol. 89(1), pp. 66-109	article	URL
Abstract: Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts’ (2005) conventional implicatures, are meanings which are projected when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the “Family of Sentences” diagnostic (e.g. Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 1990). This paper establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics (including a variant of the Family of Sentences diagnostic) that can be used with linguistically untrained consultants. This methodological advance allows validity of generalizations to be examined cross-linguistically. We apply the diagnostics in two languages, focussing on Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní), and comparing the results to those for English. Our study of Paraguayan Guaraní is the first systematic exploration of projective content in a language other than English. Based on the application of our diagnostics to a wide range of constructions, three meaningful subclasses of projective contents emerge. The resulting taxonomy of projective content has strong implications for contemporary theories of projection (e.g. Karttunen 1974; Heim 1983; van der Sandt 1992; Potts 2005; Schlenker 2009), which were developed for the projective properties of subclasses and fail to generalize to the full set of projective contents.
BibTeX: @article{Tonhauser2013, author = {Judith Tonhauser and David Beaver and Mandy Simons and Craige Roberts}, title = {Towards a Taxonomy of Projective Content}, journal = {Language}, year = {2013}, volume = {89}, number = {1}, pages = {66-109}, url = {https://ling.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/horn/Tonhauser_etal_2011.pdf} }
Tonhauser, J.	Prosodic cues to presupposition projection [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2016	Proceedings of SALT	inproceedings	DOI
Abstract: In English utterances with factive predicates, the content of the clausal complement of the predicate may project, i.e., taken to be a commitment of the speaker, even when the factive predicate is embedded under an entailment canceling operator (e.g., Kiparsky & Kiparsky 1971; Karttunen 1971). Based on impressionistic judgments, Beaver (2010) and Simons, Beaver, Roberts & Tonhauser (to appear) suggested that whether the content of the complement of an utterance with a factive predicate projects depends on the information structure of the utterance and, since information structure is prosodically marked, on the prosodic realization of the utterance. This paper describes the results of three perception experiments designed to explore the influence of the prosodic realization of an utterance with a factive predicate on the projection of the content of the complement. The results of the experiments suggest that the prosodic realization of such utterances provides a cue to the projectivity of the content of the complement. These findings provide empirical support for the question-based analysis of projection advanced in Simons et al. to appear.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Tonhauser2016, author = {Judith Tonhauser}, title = {Prosodic cues to presupposition projection}, booktitle = {Proceedings of SALT}, year = {2016}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v26i0.3788} }
Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D.I. and Degen, J.	How Projective is Projective Content? Gradience in Projectivity and At-issueness [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2018	Journal of Semantics Vol. 35(3), pp. 495-542	article	DOI
Abstract: Projective content is utterance content that a speaker may be taken to be committed to even when the expression associated with the content occurs embedded under an entailment-canceling operator (e.g., Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, 1990). It has long been observed that projective content varies in how projective it is (e.g., Karttunen, 1971; Simons, 2001; Abusch, 2010), though preliminary experimental research has been able to confirm only some of the intuitions about projection variability (e.g., Smith & Hall, 2011; Xue & Onea, 2011). Given the sparse empirical evidence for projection variability, the first goal of this paper was to investigate projection variability for projective content associated with 19 expressions of American English. The second goal was to explore the hypothesis, called the Gradient Projection Principle, that content projects to the extent that it is not at-issue. The findings of two pairs of experiments provide robust empirical evidence for projection variability and for the Gradient Projection Principle. We show that many analyses of projection cannot account for the observed projection variability and discuss the implications of our finding that projective content varies in its at-issueness for an empirically adequate analysis of projection.
BibTeX: @article{Tonhauser2018, author = {Judith Tonhauser and David I Beaver and Judith Degen}, title = {How Projective is Projective Content? Gradience in Projectivity and At-issueness}, journal = {Journal of Semantics}, year = {2018}, volume = {35}, number = {3}, pages = {495-542}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy007} }
Winterstein, G.	Ludics and Presupposition Projection [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of the Eighth International Workshop of Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics (LENLS 8), pp. 94-105	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: This work looks at the way a ludics-inspired approach to discourse deals with the discursive notions of projection and attachment of semantic content. An illustration of the case of presupposition is studied and discussed in the light of recent theories of presupposition projection. The case of the proviso problem and conditional sentences is also touched upon. It is then proposed to describe a specific use of but as an indicator of a meta-game, i.e. an invitation to revise a previous utterance which then grants access to previously inaccessible material such as presupposition.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Winterstein2011, author = {Grégoire Winterstein}, title = {Ludics and Presupposition Projection}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Eighth International Workshop of Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics (LENLS 8)}, year = {2011}, pages = {94-105}, url = {http://www.linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr/ gwinterstein/docs/Pub/Winterstein-LENLS8.pdf} }
Xue, J. and Onea, E.	Correlation between presupposition projection and at-issueness: An empirical study [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: In this paper we first experimentally show that presuppositions triggered by different triggers come with different probabilities to project. We argue that this variation is related with the distinction between atissue and not-at-issue content (cf. Simons et al. 2010). We support this claim with a follow-up experiment showing that the not-at-issueness of a presupposition correlates with the projection probability observed in the first experiment.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Xue2011, author = {Jingyang Xue and Edgar Onea}, title = {Correlation between presupposition projection and at-issueness: An empirical study}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning}, year = {2011}, url = {https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.646.290&rep=rep1&type=pdf} }
Zeevat, H.	Presupposition and accommodation in update semantics [Abstract] [BibTeX]	1992	Journal of Semantics Vol. 9, pp. 379-341	article	DOI
Abstract: A reconstruction is presented of van der Sandt's theory of presupposition in the framework of update semantics and extended to belief sentences. The resulting view is confronted with earlier approaches to presupposition (especially Heim's) in update semantics, concentrating on the approach to accommodation. It is shown in some detail that the anaphoric view of presupposition can be maintained for only a subclass of presuppositional triggers and must be given up for another class. The paper shows that the treatment of presuppositional anaphora and presuppositional accommodation is compositional with respect to stacks of information states. The brief development of the approach in section 7 shows, however, that, contrary to what one would expect, an approach in terms of stacks of information states is a powerful method in the study of DRT and other dynamic systems.
BibTeX: @article{Zeevat1992, author = {Henk Zeevat}, title = {Presupposition and accommodation in update semantics}, journal = {Journal of Semantics}, year = {1992}, volume = {9}, pages = {379-341}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/9.4.379} }