Challenges for independence-driven and context-repair responses to the proviso problem

Abstract

This note presents challenge cases for prominent pragmatic responses to the proviso problem. I offer examples of uses of conditionals if psi,,phi_{P} that seem to commit the speaker unconditionally to the presupposition P of the consequent clause ϕ, even though the sentence’s predicted semantic presupposition ψ⊃P is antecedently satisfied (contrary to context-repair accounts), and independence between ψ and P isn’t antecedently assumed (contrary to independence-driven accounts). The examples provided avoid problems with other examples from the literature used against pragmatic accounts. I leave the matter as an unresolved challenge for satisfaction theories of presupposition.