Presupposition and Policing in Complex Demonstratives*

Abstract

The expressions this cat and that glove with a hole are complex demonstratives. In this paper, we defend a thesis about complex demonstratives. The thesis we defend concerns the role of the nominal (e.g., cat and glove with a hole) in a central class of uses. In the utterances at issue, we argue, the nominal F in that F plays a policing role: no proposition is semantically expressed by the utterance, if the object appropriated by the speaker's use of that F fails to be F. We'll call this nominal policing. In characterizing nominal policing, we introduced the concept of an appropriated object. Roughly, a speaker’s use of that F appropriates an object, if the speaker demonstrates that object, where demonstrations can include both publicly observable gestures by the speaker as well as speaker intentions. For example, if a speaker says That car is better than that car, successively pointing at and intending to talk about two cars in plain view, with each use of that car the speaker appropriates a different object. In this case, the object is a car both times. If in place of one of the cars, there was a boat, but the speaker’s intentions and gestures of pointing remained the same, the speaker would appropriate a boat by one of her uses of that car. Nominal policing predicts that the speaker’s utterance in this case would fail to semantically express a proposition. The thesis of nominal policing has been a focal point of debate within the literature on complex demonstratives. It has been defended by David Braun (1994) and Emma Borg (2000), while Richard Larson and Gabriel Segal (1995) have suggested that it is false. Much of this debate has relied upon the view that complex demonstratives, like bare demonstratives, are referring expressions, and paradigms of direct reference at that. If such a view is assumed, then at least part of the semantic contribution of a use of a complex demonstrative is its referent, and the crucial question becomes what, if any,