Berlin19

Presupposition

Philippe Schlenker

(LINGUAE, Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS; New York University)

August 5-16 2019, Berlin, "Experimental Pragmatics" Summer School

Instructor: Philippe Schlenker (E-mail: philippe.schlenker@gmail.com)

Topic

Presuppositions are a central problem in natural language semantics, which centers around two main questions:

(1) Triggering Problem: why are the inferences triggered by some expressions treated as presuppositions rather than, say, at-issue entailments?

(2) Projection Problem: how are the presuppositions of complex sentences inherited from the presuppositions of their component parts and the way they are put together?

Most research has centered on the Projection Problem. In the 1980's, the analysis of 'presupposition projection' led to the development of a new and more powerful type of semantics, called 'dynamic semantics'. In recent years, various alternatives (some of them pragmatic, some of them not) were developed within non-dynamic semantics. We will provide an introduction to this debate, first by developing an explicit dynamic semantics for presuppositions, and then by considering various alternatives to it, including ones developed within bivalent or trivalent logics. The database will include traditional data, experimental data, and also gestural inferences that enrich the debate (they pertain to presupposition-like inferences that are arguably triggered by co-speech gestures).

We will then turn to the Triggering Problem, and we will discuss recent and ongoing attempts to derive the presuppositions of elementary expressions from their bivalent content (which only specifies of which they objects they are true vs. non-true, without further dividing 'non-true' into 'false' and 'presupposition failure'). Here too, we will bring gestural data into the picture, arguing that the existence of presuppositions triggered by pro-speech gestures (i.e. speech-replacing gestures) that one may not have encountered before strongly argues for the existence of a 'triggering algorithm'. Finding its precise form is thus an important challenge for contemporary research.

Honor Code

To encourage learning and discussion, the use of phones, tablets or computers is discouraged during class, unless it involves taking notes and referring to writings assigned for the class (in which case all other applications should be closed).

[Summary of some data on this topic]

Topics

Topics will be finalized later, but they are likely to include the following list.

Introduction - Projection I
Projection II
Projection III
Projection IV
Triggering V
Triggering VI
Triggering I
Triggering II

Readings

See below. If they are not linked below, they will be made available in this Dropbox folder.

Main readings:

On Projection: Schlenker, Philippe: 2011, Presupposition Projection: Two Theories of Local Contexts –Language and Linguistics Compass 5, 12: 858–879

On Triggering: Abrusán, Marta: 2011, Predicting the Presuppositions of Soft Triggers, Linguistics & Philosophy.

Additional readings

Beaver, David and Geurts, Bart: 2011. Presupposition. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Schlenker, Philippe: 2016, The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface. Cambridge Handbook of Formal Semantics. (2nd part on presupposition)

Other surveys

Philosophical foundations of dynamic semantics: Lewis, Karen: 2017, Dynamic Semantics. Oxford Handbooks Online.

DRT approaches: Geurts, Bart: 1999, Presuppositions and Pronouns. Elsevier.

Schedule [to be adapted as we go]

Monday, August 5th: Introduction - Projection I

Additional readings – classics: Stalnaker 1974; Heim 1983

Wednesday, August 7th: Projection II

Thursday, August 8th: Projection III

Friday, August 9th: Projection IV

Additional reading – experimental data: Chemla 2009

Monday, August 12th: Projection V

Additional readings:

Mandelkern et al. 2019 on conjunction

Ingason 2016 on hierarchical vs. linear updates

Wednesday, August 14th: Projection VI