Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

The satisfaction theory 97
§ 3.4 an argument is discussed that requires them to be non-truth-functional,
now-truth-functional,
and then the Stalnaker/Lewis analysis will be taken up again.
It may perhaps be less than obvious why the proviso problem is a problem
at all. For intuitively speaking it is perfectly clear how examples like (lIb) (lib)
and (12b) should be analysed: since the presupposition that Fred has a wife
is not satisfied in these cases, that presupposition (i.e. the presupposition as
triggered by the possessive NP) should be accommodated. However, for a
satisfaction theorist this isn't an appealing line to take, to say the least. The
beauty of the satisfaction theory is that the facts about presupposition
projection automatically fall out of a theory of context change and some
general principles governing accommodation. 4 According to the satisfaction
theorist, there is no need for a theory of presupposition projection; all he
needs, or so he hopes, is a list of presupposition inducers, which records that
definite NPs trigger existential presuppositions, that factive verbs
presuppose their complements, and so on. Once he has such a list, he expects
his dynamic semantics to tell him what requirements any given sentence
imposes on a context in which it is uttered. But seen from this perspective, if
he is prepared to stipulate that under certain circumstances a stronger
proposition must be accommodated than is required by the rules of context
change, the satisfaction theorist can dismiss not only the proviso problem,
but one of his main premises, to boot.
This point is important enough to be laboured a bit. As we have seen, the
satisfaction theory predicts that ~ 'V{X} \|/{%} presupposes that cp ~ %. X. In fact,
this prediction follows automatically from the dynamic semantics given in
the previous section. Suppose now that we would rule that, if c doesn't satisfy
~ %, X, then x X must be accommodated. It would be easy, in fact trivial, to
postulate this. But if we adopt this measure, there ceases to be a connection
between the presuppositions predicted by our dynamic semantics, on the
one hand, and what the theory says about accommodation, on the other. So
the point is not that a postulate to this effect wouldn't solve the problem, but
that the problem would be solved at the expense of the theory's austere
elegance.
There are examples which have been argued to show that the
conditionalized presuppositions predicted by the satisfaction theory are
correct. The following are cases in point: pointS
5
(15) a. If Fred is a scuba diver, then he will bring his wet suit. suit,
b. Fred is a scuba diver —> ~ Fred has a wet suit
4
4 I am prepared to grant that these principles aren't restricted to presuppositional phenomena
(cf. Lewis 1979), and can therefore be motivated on independent grounds.
5 lowe I these examples to Manfred Krifka. See Beaver (1992,1993), who alleges that these are
counterexamples against van der Sandt's theory of presupposition projection.