Factivity and Presuppositions

Factivity and Presupposition

Presuppositions, probabilities and belief

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How to Update Information States : Review Article of McCready (2015)

Reliability in Pragmatics, by Eric McCready, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015, xi + 291pp

Believing epistemic contradictions

What is it to believe something might be the case? We develop a puzzle that creates difficulties for standard answers to this question. We go on to propose our own solution, which integrates a Bayesian approach to belief with a dynamic semantics for epistemic modals. After showing how our account solves the puzzle, we explore a surprising consequence: virtually all of our beliefs about what might be the case provide counterexamples to the view that rational belief is closed under logical implication

Modeling the Dynamic Effects of Discourse: Principles and Frameworks

International audienceWhen studying the meaning of natural language expressions, sentence level provides a natural entry point. Its relevance of course depends on the focus we want to put on the meaning: as related to thought, to communication, to truth, etc. In this paper, we concentrate on the model theoretic view on meaning, in particular via first order logic representation. More specifically, we present phenomena that illustrate the challenges raised by discourse to truth-conditional semantics and compositionality. We show that proposals to address theses challenges rely on the additional device of contexts and on the way sentences can access and modify these contexts. This capability is usually referred to as the context change potential of a sentence. Depending on the phenomenon, the contexts need to represent different kinds of information: propositions, discourse referents, and variations on these elements. We also show that taking into account the rhetorical structure of discourse leads to even richer structuring of the context. Parallel to the presentation of the phenomena, we concentrate on formalisms giving an account of the dynamics of discourse. We introduce the well established formalisms of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) Dynamic Predicate Logic (DPL) , and the more recently developed approach based on continuation semantics. Finally, we introduce Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) that combines the effects of dynamics and discourse structure.La phrase représente un niveau d'entrée naturel dans l'étude du sens des expressions de la langue naturelle. Sa pertinence dépend bien sûr de la perspective que l'on souhaite mettre en avant sur le sens : celle relative à la pensée, celle relative à la communication, celle relative à la valeur de vérité... Dans cet article, nous nous concentrons sur la perspective donnée au sens par la théorie des modèles, en particulier par la représentation avec la logique du premier ordre. Plus spécifiquement, nous présentons des phénomènes illustrant les difficultés posées par le discours à la sémantique vériconditionnelle et à la compositionalité. Nous montrons que les propositions pour répondre à ces difficultés reposent sur l'utilisation de contextes et de la manière dons les phrases peuvent accéder à ce contexte et le modifier. Ce mécanisme est généralement appelé potentiel de changement du contexte d'une phrase. Suivant le phénomène considéré, le contexte doit représenter différents types d'informations : des propositions, des référents de discours, et des variations de ces éléments. Nous montrons également que la prise en compte de la structure rhétorique du discours conduit à une représentation encore plus riche du contexte. Parallèlement à l'exposé de ces phénomènes, nous présentons différents formalismes qui en rendent compte. Nous présentons la théorie des représentations discursives (DRT), de la logique des prédicats dynamique (DPL), ainsi que l'approche fondée sur les continuations proposée plus récemment. Enfin nous présentons la théorie des représentations discursives segmentées (SDRT) qui combine les effets de la dynamique et de la structure discursive

Propositional Anaphora: The case of embedded polar responses in Dutch and English

This dissertation investigates the embedded polar response paradigms of Dutch, English and to some extent of German. These are responses that involve an agent, a propositional attitude verb and an anaphor, such as the affirmative response ‘I think so’ to a question like ‘Did John feed the dog?’ (cf. Sailor 2012). In such responses, anaphors, like ‘so’, have been argued to refer to the proposition introduced in the preceding questions (see, e.g., Cushing 1972; Cornish 1992; Asher 1993; Needham 2012; Krifka 2013; Snider 2017). Unlike anaphors in for instance the nominal domain, propositional anaphors have not been studied extensively, with the exceptions of Cushing (1972); Webber (1991); Cornish (1992); Asher (1993); Hegarty et al. (2002), Snider (2017), Pasquereau (2018, 2022) and recent studies of response particles ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (see, e.g., Krifka, 2013; Brasoveanu et al., 2013; Roelofsen and Farkas, 2015; Claus et al., 2017; Goodhue and Wagner, 2018). The present work aims to fill this gap from the perspective of embedded polar responses. Note that the English embedded polar response paradigm consists of responses like ‘I think so’, ‘I think’ (using a null proform), or ‘I think not’ in combination with the predicate ‘think’. The response ‘I think it’ is considered infelicitous. In combination with, e.g., ‘doubt’, one can only response ‘I doubt it’ in response to a question, whereas ‘I doubt so’ or ‘I doubt’ would be infelicitous responses. This pattern raises the question why there are multiple embedded polar responses in the first place and why they are restricted to certain predicates. Furthermore, it raises the question if embedded polar response paradigms in other languages are similar. To shed light on these questions, the present dissertation investigates responses in Dutch, English and to some extent in German. One of the main conclusions of this dissertation is that there is no uniform class of anaphoric items used in embedded polar responses. I show that these anaphors, like ‘it’, ‘so’, or the null proform, are very different from one another in terms of their semantic contribution and their pragmatic role in their paradigms. Despite these differences, there are also similarities between the different responses considered and the different languages under consideration. This dissertation considers two categories: Type I and Type II responses. This dissertation first argues that the category of Type I responses consists of responses involving items like Dutch polar ‘van’ and English ‘so’. It argues that these responses signal that the proposition under reference has not been settled yet - because either the speaker is uncertain about it his/herself or other interlocutors disagree about the status of the proposition. As a consequence, both polar ‘van’ and ‘so’ cannot generally occur with factive predicates. Note that polar ‘van’ and ‘so’ signal their Type I meanings in different ways. Chapter 3 argues that the ‘uncertainty’ signaled by polar ‘van’ is due to the similative meaning hardwired into its semantics. In contrast, Chapter 4 argues that ‘so’ bears a presupposition with respect to the common ground status of its referent. More specifically, Chapter 4 argues that ‘so’ presupposes that its referent is still under discussion, i.e. on the Table in terms of Farkas and Bruce (2009), thereby building on Needham’s (2012) account. In addition, this dissertation shows that ‘so’ is in fact an adverb. These two properties set ‘so’ apart from the other anaphors considered in this thesis, although this anphor is often considered an exemplary propositional anaphor. In the first part of this dissertation we thus saw that embedded polar responses with polar ‘van’ and ‘so’ thus have rather similar functions, but a very different underlying semantics and pragmatics. This dissertation argues that the second category, Type II responses, consists of embedded polar responses that lack a presupposition or implication that signals uncertainty or non-settledness. This dissertation shows that this category involves embedded polar responses containing for instance weak pronouns, like ‘het’ or ‘it’, or the null proform. As a consequence, these kinds of responses compete with Type I responses. Whenever a speaker wishes to express that the proposition under reference is not yet settled, s/he will choose a Type I response over a Type II response. That is, an English speaker would prefer a response involving ‘so’ over a response involving a null proform in such a scenario. The Dutch counterpart would involve polar ‘van’ instead of ‘het’. Furthermore, Chapters 5 and Chapter 6 argue that there are differences between English and German, on the one hand, and Dutch, on the other, where it comes to Type II responses. Both English and German are able to form embedded polar responses with predicates like ‘think’ or ‘guess’ and the null complement anaphor (NCA) and are unable to form such responses with weak pronouns. For Dutch, this works the other way around: Dutch can form embedded polar responses with, e.g., ‘denken’ (think) and ‘het’ (it), but not with an NCA. Moreover, English and German may use propositional attitude verbs in combination with the negative adverbs ‘nicht’ and ‘not’ in embedded polar responses, whereas Dutch cannot. Chapter 5 shows that such responses with negative operators are most parsimoniously analyzed as involving NCA, just like their non-negative counterparts. On the basis of the languages under consideration this dissertation argues there seems to exist a correlation between (i) being able to form embedded polar responses with NCA and a negative adverb and (ii) being unable to form one with a weak pronoun and a predicate like think. Chapter 6 investigates Dutch embedded polar responses with weak pronouns in more detail. The main question of this chapter is why Dutch features such responses whereas English does not. Chapter 6 argues that this is the case, because ‘het’ is the phonologically weakest proform available in Dutch. Dutch does not feature an NCA. The competitors of ‘het’ are, e.g., the phonologically heavier demonstratives ‘dat’ (= that) and ‘dit’ (= this). These proforms, on their turn, compete with one another in terms of proxomity. Since the demonstratives are phonologically heavier than the weak proform, they are dispreferred for embedded polar responses, which target the most salient proposition in the discourse at the moment of answering. In addition, ‘het’ competes with polar ‘van’. As mentioned above, polar ‘van’ is chosen over ‘het’ if the speaker wishes to express a more subjective meaning. There are thus different types of competition at play: Competition in terms of subjectivity, phonological strength and proximity. The same competition applies to the Dutch forms. This dissertation shows that we cannot simply compare the licensing of one propositional anaphor with another without taking into consideration the individual meanings and uses of these proforms. In discussing different kinds of responses across languages, this dissertation also provides insight into the different discourse moves that constitute answers to polar questions. It shows that responses with for instance polar ‘van’ in Dutch or ‘so’ in English convey more and different information than those with for instance ‘het’ in Dutch or NCA in English. The former bear more information than just the information that the proposition under reference is compatible or not with the attitude holder’s information state, as they also provide information on the unsettledness or uncertainty of the proposition under reference. In addition, the present work sheds more light on propositional attitude verbs. It shows that Anand and Hacquard’s (2008, 2013) distinction between doxastic and assertive predicates is highly relevant when considering embedded polar responses (cf. Scheffler 2008) and that these predicates behave differently when occurring with different items in embedded polar responses. We saw that the use of polar ‘van’ in Dutch and ‘so’ in English is more flexible than that of other anaphors. Again, this can be attributed to the ‘special’ meaning of these anaphors and their evidential uses. This illustrates once more that the items used in embedded polar responses are not a uniform set

On the semantics of phi features on pronouns

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 246-260).This thesis investigates three topics relating to the semantics of phi features on pronouns. Part I focuses on gender features on pronouns. Following previous studies (Cooper 1983, Heim & Kratzer 1998), I claim that they are presupposition triggers. Based on this assumption, I show that predicates containing bound gendered pronouns have an assertive meaning that does not entail the gender presupposition, and further point out that such predicates pose a serious challenge for existing theories of presupposition projection, especially with respect to quantified sentences. A conclusion drawn from this discussion is that the presupposition needs to be dissociated from the assertive meaning, as in Karttunen & Peters's (1979) two dimensional theory. However, such a theory is known to run into the so-called binding problem in quantified sentences. I propose a solution to the binding problem using the mechanism of cross-sentential anaphora, and show that the resulting theory nicely accounts for the projection properties of various quantificational determiners. Part II discusses the interpretation of person and number features on bound pronouns. It is known that some occurrences of phi features on bound pronoun behave as if they are semantically inert (Heim 2008b, Jacobson to appear, Kratzer 1998a, 2009, Partee 1989). One popular account of this phenomenon, the minimal pronoun account, claims that such phi features are purely morphological, and postulates a PF operation that transmits phi features of a binder onto each pronoun that it binds (Heim 2008b, Kratzer 1998a, 2009). I put forward an alternative account that dispenses with the PF operation, and instead puts most of the burden on syntax, by encoding more information in the indices than standardly assumed. As a result, all occurrences of phi features are semantically relevant. I offer both empirical and conceptual arguments for the proposed account over the minimal pronoun account. Part III deals with the phenomenon of indexical shifting where person features are systematically affected (Anand 2006, Anand & Nevins 2004, Schlenker 1999, 2003b). I discuss novel data from Uyghur and Japanese as well as data drawn from previous studies, particularly focusing on the universals and variation within and across languages.by Yasutada Sudo.Ph.D

A modal analysis of presupposition and modal subordination

In this paper I will give a modal two-dimensional analysis of presupposition and modal subordination. I will think of presupposition as a non-veridical propositional attitude. This allows me to evaluate what is presupposed and what is asserted at different dimensions without getting into the binding problem. What is presupposed will be represented by an accessibility relation between possible worlds. The major part of the paper consists of a proposal to account for the dependence of the interpretation of modal expressions, i.e. modal subordination, in terms of an accessibility relation as well. Moreover, I show how such an analysis can be extended from the propositional to the predicate logical level.