Abstract

The classical view of presuppositions is that they are a natural class of content that a) typically projects, b) is backgrounded, and c) can be analyzed as a contextual felicity constraint. This talk (which is based on joint work with Judith Degen at Stanford University) critically evaluates this conception. I first provide an overview of the results of prior empirical research that has challenged each of the properties in a), b) and c), thereby suggesting that contents that have traditionally been considered presuppositions are not a natural class. The remainder of the talk then focuses on property a): While projection is often characterized as categorical (that is, content either typically projects or not), there is mounting empirical evidence (based on inference-rating measures) that projection is gradient, with content being more or less projective (e.g., Karttunen 1971, Xue and Onea 2011, de Marneffe et al. 2019, Tonhauser et al. 2018, Degen and Tonhauser 2022). Mandelkern, Zehr, Romoli & Schwarz 2020, however, claimed that a different measure of projection, namely naturalness ratings in explicit ignorance contexts, provides support for categorical projection and distinguishes presuppositions from nonpresuppositions. I present the results of an experiment designed to investigate Mandelkern et al.’s 2020 claim for factive predicates (presumed presupposition triggers) and nonfactive ones (nontriggers). The results do not support Mandelkern et al.’s 2020 claim and rather align with Degen and Tonhauser’s 2022 result that there is no evidence for a categorical distinction between factive and nonfactive predicates, or presuppositions and nonpresuppositions.

 

References:

 

de Marneffe, Marie, Mandy Simons, and Judith Tonhauser. 2019. The CommitmentBank: Investigating projection in naturally occurring discourse. Sinn und Bedeutung 23:107–124.

 

Degen, Judith and Judith Tonhauser. 2022. Are there factive predicates? An empirical investigation. Language 98:552–591.

 

Karttunen, Lauri. 1971. Some observations on factivity. Papers in Linguistics 4:55–69.

 

Mandelkern, Matthew, Jeremy Zehr, Jacopo Romoli, and Florian Schwarz. 2020. We’ve discovered that projection across conjunction is asymmetric (and it is!). Linguistics & Philosophy 43:473–514.

 

Tonhauser, Judith, David Beaver, and Judith Degen. 2018. How projective is projective content? Gradience in projectivity and at-issueness. Journal of Semantics 35:495–542.

 

Xue, Jingyang and Edgar Onea. 2011. Correlation between projective meaning and at-issueness: An empirical study. 2011 ESSLLI Workshop on Projective Content. Pages 171–184.