Presupposition Accommodation Research Articles

Situational context affects definiteness preferences: Accommodation of presuppositions.

In 4 experiments, we used self-paced reading and eye tracking to demonstrate that readers are, under some conditions, sensitive to the presuppositions of definite versus indefinite determiner phrases (DPs). Reading was faster when the context stereotypically provided a single possible referent for a definite DP or multiple possible referents for an indefinite DP than when context and DP definiteness were mismatched. This finding goes beyond previous evidence that definite DPs are processed more rapidly than are indefinite DPs when there is a unique or familiar referent in the context, showing that readers are sensitive to the semantics and pragmatics of (in)definiteness. However, the finding was obtained only when readers had to perform a simple arithmetic task between reading a sentence and seeing a question about it. The intervening task may have encouraged them to process the sentence more deeply in order to form a representation that would persist while doing the arithmetic. The methodological implications of this observation are discussed.

Errors in Pragmatics

In this paper we are going to show that error coping strategies play an essential role in linguistic pragmatics. We study the effect of noisy speaker strategies within a framework of signalling games with feedback loop. We distinguish between cases in which errors occur in message selection and cases in which they occur in signal selection. The first type of errors affects the content of an utterance, and the second type its linguistic expression. The general communication model is inspired by the Shannon---Weaver communication model. We test the model by a number of benchmark examples, including examples of relevance implicatures, quantity implicatures, and presupposition accommodation.

Meaning and Context in Children's Understanding of Gradable Adjectives

This paper explores what children and adults know about three specific ways that meaning and context interact: the interpretation of expressions whose extensions vary in different contexts (semantic context dependence); conditions on the felicitous use of expressions in a discourse context (presupposition accommodation) and informative uses of expressions in contexts in which they strictly speaking do not apply (imprecision). The empirical focus is the use of unmodified (positive form) gradable adjectives (GAs) in definite descriptions to distinguish between two objects that differ in the degree to which they possess the property named by the adjective. We show that by 3 years of age, children are sensitive to all three varieties of context–meaning interaction and that their knowledge of this relation with the definite description is appropriately guided by the semantic representations of the GA appearing in it. These findings suggest that children's semantic representations of the GAs we investigated and the definite determiner the are adult-like and that they are aware of the consequences of these representations when relating meaning and context. Bolstered by adult participant responses, this work provides important experimental support for theoretical claims regarding the semantics of gradable predicates and the nature of different types of ‘interpretive variability’, specifically semantic context dependence v. pragmatic tolerance of imprecision.

WHAT IS PRESUPPOSITION ACCOMMODATION, AGAIN?*

Philosophical PerspectivesVolume 22, Issue 1 p. 137-170 WHAT IS PRESUPPOSITION ACCOMMODATION, AGAIN?* Kai Von Fintel, Kai Von Fintel MITSearch for more papers by this author Kai Von Fintel, Kai Von Fintel MITSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 December 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2008.00144.xCitations: 131Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume22, Issue1December 2008Pages 137-170 RelatedInformation

Presupposition Accommodation and Informativity Considerations with Aspectual Still

This paper deals with a newly observed phenomenon which lies at the interface of the semantics and pragmatics of aspectual still (as in John is still asleep), namely the fact that still is infelicitous when it appears in past tense sentences whose reference time is not specified by some temporal adverbial or the utterance context. The main claim of the paper is that in such sentences, the truth of the assertion and that of the 'prior time' presupposition this particle triggers can be both inferred from the truth of the minimally contrasting still-less counterpart. Moreover, in such cases the presuppositional status of the 'prior time' claim is lost. Hence, the use of still in such sentences is uninformative and thus infelicitous. The analysis has several more general theoretical implications. Concerning the semantics of still, it shows that the novel data cannot be accounted for by using current definitions of the presupposition triggered by still Instead, a modified definition of still is developed, which, following Ippolito (2007), uses one eventuality variable in both the assertion and the presupposition of sentences with still but, unlike this theory, does not require the denotation of this variable to be contextually salient. As for the analysis of tense and temporal structure of clauses, the interaction of still with frame adverbials supports the view that such adverbials denote intervals identical to the reference time of the sentence, rather than including it. In addition, the paper argues that the contrast between felicitous and infelicitous cases of still can only be explained if, contrary to many current analyses, we assume that past tense is not necessarily anaphoric but can be represented in some cases as a new variable bound by existential closure. Given the proposed analysis, the felicity or infelicity of still in past tense sentences can be seen as a diagnostic for determining whether or not the reference time in such sentences is anaphoric or not.

Formal Alternatives as a Solution to the Proviso Problem

No abstract.

Learnability and linguistic performance

Crain, S. & Thornton, R. Investigations in Universal Grammar. Cambridge: MIT, 1998.Stephen Crain (C) & Rosalind Thornton (T) have garnered a well-deserved reputation for their unwavering commitment to language learnability as a constraint not only on theories of child language and language development but also on experimental design and the interpretation of experimental findings. In his well-known defense of children's early knowledge of syntactic constraints, Crain (1991) argued for the widely-held position that the best solution to the learnability problem is to assume that grammatical knowledge which cannot be learned on the basis of experience is specified in advance as part of the human biological endowment for language in the form of a UNIVERSALGRAMMAR (UG) (Chomsky, 1965). With respect to experimental design, C&T have strongly maintained that even young children know UG constraints but perform poorly in some experiments-due to the extralinguistic demands associated with experimental tasks, particularly those involved in presupposition accommodation and complex response planning. C&T specifically design their experiments to reduce the impact of extralinguistic demands on children's linguistic performance while at the same time providing felicitous environments for adultlike performance.

TOWARDS AN EXPLANATION OF COPULA EFFECTS

This paper deals with a series of semantic contrasts between the copula be and the preposition as, two functional elements that both head elementary predication structures. It will be argued that the meaning of as is a type lowering device shifting the meaning of its complement NP from the type of generalized quantifiers to the type of properties (where properties are conceived as relations between individuals and situations), while the copula be induces a type coercion from (partial) situations to (total) possible worlds. Paired with van der Sandt's (1992) theory of presupposition accommodation, these assumptions will account for the observed contrasts between as and be.

Towards an explanation of copula effects

This paper deals with a series of semantic contrasts between the copula "be" and the preposition "as", two functional elements that both head elementary predication structures. It will be argued that the meaning of "as" is a type lowering device shifting the meaning of its complement NP from generalized quantifier type to property type (where properties are conceived as relations between individuals and situations), while the copula "be" induces a type coercion from (partial) situations to (total) possible worlds. Paired with van der Sandt's 1992 theory of presupposition accommodation, these assumptions will account for the observed contrasts between "as" and "be".