Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

124 Presuppositions and Pronouns
(4) a. Yes, the doctor warned him, but Tom kept on.
b. He looks at me and John goes out of his mind.
c. He lied to me, and John was my friend!
In each of these examples an anaphoric pronoun in the first conjunct refers
forward to an antecedent in the second. Intuitively, such sentences are most
likely to be uttered in a context in which the intended antecedents of these
pronouns have already been introduced, but there are at least two ways of
showing that such anaphors cannot always be construed as surreptitiously
referring backwards. First, consider the following discourse: 4
(5) Barney and Fred were arguing when I came in. Well, I'm standing
by the door and then he looks at me and {he/Fred} goes out of his
mind.
Apparently, the italicized occurrence of he is at least dependent on the
second occurrence of Fred; for if we replace the latter with a pronoun, it
becomes unclear whom the first he is intended to refer to. This should suffice
to dispel the simple-minded view that forward reference is just an
underhanded way of referring backwards. The same point is brought home
more forcefully by the observation that forward referring pronouns may
have indefinite antecedents, as the following examples show:
(6) a. I don't know what he i ; has on them, , j but it seems that [one of
the pupils]^ pupils]i is blackmailing [some of the teachers]t teachers].
b. I don't know what theYi they z have on them, , j but it seems that [most
of the pupils], pupils]i are blackmailing [at least one or two of the
teachers]t teachers].
In (6a), he and them refer forward to one of the pupils and some of the
teachers, respectively. These indefinites are most likely to be construed
specifically, but as (6b) demonstrates, this is not a prerequisite for forward
reference: in this example it is hard if not impossible to construe at least one
or two of the teachers specifically, but nonetheless it is the intended
antecedent of the preceding pronoun them.
These observations are at odds with the dynamic account of anaphoric
reference in conjunctions, and in particular cases like (6a, b) are counterexamples
against the standard dynamic approach. The question therefore is
counter-
if the dynamic theory can be repaired so as to capture these data. I can see a
4
4 Here and in the following I am indebted to van Deemter's (1990) discussion of forward
reference.