de Marneffe, Marie-Catherine

Lai, Catherine

Mahler, Taylor

English

Edinburgh Research Explorer

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Factivity, prosody, and at-issuenessCitation for published version:Mahler, T, de Marneffe, M-C & Lai, C 2021, 'Factivity, prosody, and at-issueness: Investigating theprojection behavior of (non-)factives', MK40: Common Knowledge, Common Ground, and Context inCommunication, London, United Kingdom, 24/06/21 - 26/06/21.Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordGeneral rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 17. May. 2022Factivity, prosody, and at-issueness: Investigating the projection behavior of (non-)factivesTaylor Mahler (OSU), Marie-Catherine de Marneffe (OSU), Catherine Lai (Edinburgh)Tonhauser et al. (2018) hypothesized in their Gradient Projection Principle (GPP) that contentprojects (i.e., is taken as a speaker commitment in entailment-cancelling environments) to theextent that it is does not address – or is not-at-issue relative to – the Question Under Discus-sion (QUD). Consistent with the GPP, at-issueness and projection have been found to be corre-lated for contents expressed by the complements (CCs) of factive predicates, and prosodic cuesto at-issueness (via sentential information structure) also influence the projection of factive CCs(Cummins & Rohde 2015, Tonhauser 2016, Djärv & Bacovcin 2020). However, prosodic cuesto at-issueness appear not to have the same effect on the projection of non-factive CCs (Djärv &Bacovcin 2020, Mahler et al. 2019). This difference in behavior is consistent with the GPP if fac-tivity is assumed to influence the at-issueness of the CC. We report on an experiment to test thisassumption. Our work goes beyond prior experimental research by investigating the relation be-tween at-issueness and projection for non-factive CCs, and explicitly measuring effects of prosodyon at-issueness.At-issueness and CC projection with (non-)factives Empirical support for the GPP primarilycomes from experiments on factive presupposition projection. Using written constructed stimuli,Tonhauser et al. (2018) found that the at-issueness and projectivity of factive CCs were correlated,as predicted by the GPP: contents that were rated less at-issue were more projective, and viceversa. The GPP also predicts that whether content projects depends on whether it addresses aQUD that makes the content at-issue. Experiments demonstrating that prosody influences factivepresupposition projection are consistent with this prediction, assuming that prosody constrains theQUD addressed by the utterance (Cummins & Rohde 2015, Tonhauser 2016, Djärv & Bacovcin2020). The findings of these experiments suggest that factive CCs are less projective when acomplement constituent receives narrow focus as in (1-a) than when it does not as in (1-b):(1) Martha (about Andrew and Rhonda): (adapted from Tonhauser et al. 2018)a. Did Andrew discover that [she]F visited the zoo? complement subject focusb. Did Andrew [discover]F that she visited the zoo? predicate focusc. Did Andrew discover that [she visited the zoo?]F? whole complement focusIf narrow focus within the complement (i.e.,(1-a)) implicates a QUD in which the CC is at-issue(e.g., Who visited the zoo?) and absence of narrow complement focus (i.e., (1-b)) implicates a QUDin which the CC is not-at-issue (e.g., What’s the speaker’s relation to the CC that Rhonda visitedthe zoo?), these findings are predicted by the GPP. Whether the GPP also explains the projectionbehavior of contents associated with non-factive predicates is unclear. To our knowledge, there areonly two experimental studies that bear on this question. In an experiment with constructed stimuli,Djärv & Bacovcin (2020) found that non-factive CCs in the complement subject focus conditionwere more projective than those in the predicate focus condition. Using naturally-occurring utter-ances, Mahler et al. (2019) found no effect of prosody on the projection of non-factive CCs. Thecurrent study adds to the experimental literature on CC projection by explicitly testing for prosodiceffects on at-issueness (not only the QUD), and exploring whether these effects are constrained bythe factivity of the embedding predicates. In particular, we aim to determine whether differencesin at-issueness due to factivity constrain the effect of prosody on projection behavior.Experiment We conducted an experiment on Prolific, adapted from Tonhauser et al. (2018).Materials: The stimuli were spoken versions of Tonhauser et al.’s (2018) written stimuli, adaptedfor the purposes of the experiment. Each target sentence featured a clause-embedding predicate(be right, say, believe, discover, know, realize) and a clausal complement instantiated by 6 differ-ent lexical contents (2 per predicate). A ToBI trained speaker recorded the target sentences in 3prosodic conditions: narrow focus on the complement subject (1-a), narrow focus on the predicate(1-b), and focus over the entire complement (1-c). 3 control stimuli were also included.Procedure: Participants were assigned 6 target stimuli (2 in each prosodic condition) and 3 controlstimuli. The same stimuli were presented to each participant in two blocks: an at-issueness blockand a projection block. After listening to target sentences in the at-issueness block, participantsindicated whether the speaker is asking about the CC, e.g., Is Martha asking whether Rhonda vis-ited the zoo?. In the projection block, participants indicated whether the speaker was certain aboutthe truth of the CC e.g., Is Martha certain that Rhonda visited the zoo?. Participants responded byusing a slider labeled from “no” to “yes”. Higher ratings were assumed to indicate that the CC ismore at-issue (in the at-issueness block) and more projective (in the projection block).Results & Discussion We expected not-at-issueness to be predicted by an interaction betweenprosody and factivity, with prosody influencing not-at-issueness for factive predicates only. Con-trary to this expectation, a linear mixed-effects model predicting not-at-issueness ratings (trans-formed from the at-issueness ratings) from factivity, prosody, and their interaction revealed thatthe interaction was not significant. However, factivity and prosody were significant main effects.As illustrated in Figure 1, CCs of factive predicates were more not-at-issue than those of non-factive predicates. CCs were also more not-at-issue in the predicate focus condition than the othertwo conditions. A separate model in which the individual predicate was used as a predictor (ratherthan predicate factivity) confirmed the absence of an interaction between predicate and prosody.We also expected projection to be predicted by an interaction between prosody and factivity, withprosody influencing the projection of factive predicates only. Contrary to this expectation, a linearmixed-effect model predicting projection ratings from fixed effects of factivity, prosody, and theirinteraction revealed that the interaction was not significant. However, factivity and prosody weresignificant main effects. Consistent with standard assumptions about factivity, the CCs of factivepredicates were found to be more projective than those of non-factives, as shown in Figure 2. Therewas also a significant main effect of prosody, such that CCs were more projective in the wholecomplement condition than the complement subject condition. This is, to our knowledge, a novelfinding: previous experimental work has not explored how broad focus (i.e., focus over the entirecomplement) influences CC projection. Whether this effect replicates and how it can be accountedfor are questions for future research. Finally, projection ratings in the predicate condition were notsignificantly higher than those in the complement subject condition, though the direction of thetrend is expected given previous experimental findings.The results also suggest that not-at-issueness is a less robust predictor of projection for some pred-icates. As shown in Figure 3, not-at-issueness and projection are highly correlated for the factivepredicates know, discover and realize but the non-factive predicates be right, say and believe areless projective than expected based on their not-at-issueness ratings.Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3Overall, these findings suggest that the at-issueness of the CC is influenced by the factivity ofthe embedding predicate. However, differences in projection behavior are not straightforwardlypredicted by these differences in at-issueness. Our work therefore presents a challenge to the GPP,suggesting that the principle may not predict the projection behavior of non-factive CCs.Selected References Tonhauser, Judith, David Beaver, and Judith Degen. 2018. How projective isprojective content? Gradience in projectivity and at-issueness. Journal of Semantics.Mahler, Taylor, Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Catherine Lai. 2019. The prosody of presuppositionprojection in naturally-occurring utterances. Sinn und Bedeutung 24.

Factivity, prosody, and at-issueness: Investigating the projection behavior of (non-)factives

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Factivity, prosody, and at-issueness: Investigating the projection behavior of (non-)factives

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