Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

88 Presuppositions and Pronouns
objections presented in this chapter are mostly new ones, but it should be
noted that they are aimed at the same weaknesses that Gazdar and others
have complained about, and that the main problems have been known for
more than two decades.
This chapter is organized as follows. In the first section, § 3.1, the
satisfaction theory is introduced, and in § 3.2 it is shown that the theory's
predictions are too weak. In particular, the satisfaction theory often predicts
presuppositions of the form 'V \j/ where the intuitively perceived
presupposition is simply'll. \|/. I call this the 'proviso problem'. The proviso
problem has been tackled in the literature by assuming that there is some
process which, in some way or other, allows the hearer to conclude from a
conditional presupposition 'V \|/ that the speaker in fact wants to convey
that'll \|/ is true. Thus the inference that the speaker is committed to the truth
of 'V \|/ is obtained in two steps, and I argue that this by itself is already a
questionable set-up. In §§ 3.3 and 3.4, I examine the two proposals for
implementing this two-step model which have been suggested in the
literature, and find them both wanting. Moreover, I present evidence that
strongly suggests that no such model could ever work. Some further
problems for the satisfaction theory are discussed in § 3.5. Finally, in § 3.6,1
I
compare the satisfaction theory with the binding theory, and try to explain
why the former but not the latter runs into the problems discussed in the
preceding sections.
3.1 The theory
Like the binding theory, the satisfaction theory draws its main inspiration
from Stalnaker's insight that, in general, an utterance changes the context in
several consecutive steps, between which local (or intermediate) contexts
are constructed, and that this process of context change is the key to the
solution of the projection problem. But the satisfaction theory departs from
Stalnaker's original ideas in a quite radical manner, in that it adopts the
position that sentences (not utterances) change contexts, and that the
compositional semantics of an expression (not only of sentences) may be
defined in terms of what it does to its context. In a word, the satisfaction
theory requires a dynamic semantics, which defines meaning in terms of
context change, and the theory claims that once we have such a semantics,
the projection problem will be solved, too. This is a clean break with
Stalnaker's views. When Stalnaker speaks of context change, he has
pragmatic processes in mind, and his notion of presupposition is a thoroughly
pragmatic one, too. The satisfaction theory is an attempt to recast Stalnaker's
pragmatic theory in a semantical mould. To some readers, this may seem like
an attempt to square the circle, and it will gradually become clear that this
analogy is not entirely out of place.