Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

94 Presuppositions and Pronouns
updated to a context that meets the requirement that (9b) is true, then the
resulting context will satisfy the proposition that Fred has a wife, via modus
ponens. Thus both sentences will license the inference that (8b) is true, but
only (8a) presupposes (8b); (9a) merely presupposes (9b). Besides, one
would probably want to say that (8a) and (9a) entail (8b) anyhow, so
although it seems a bit peculiar that these sentences should have different
presuppositions, the predictions we get are otherwise unobjectionable.
Things take on a different aspect, though, if we embed (8a) and (9a) under
a negation operator or in a modal context. First, let us have a brief look at
the type of example for which the satisfaction theory gives the correct
predictions:
(10) It is {posssible}{ P° ssslble \ that Fred has has a a wife and and that his his wife wife hates sonnets.
I not true
J
Negation, as we have seen, is transparent to presuppositions:.