Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

134 Presuppositions and Pronouns
argued that this inference is of a presuppositional nature. Generalizing this
observation, we arrive at
(2) The e-principle
If V is a verb of prepositional propositional attitude and SIx} S{%} is a simple sentence
in which the presupposition is triggered that %, X, then (a speaker who
utters)'« 'a Vs that SIx}' S{%}' presupposes that %. X.
I call this the 'e-principle' because it says that a presupposition that arises in
the attitude context associated with V Vis construed externally, i.e. as not being
a proper part of the attitude report. There may be some temptation to view
this as a special kind of de re construal, but as I shall argue below, what I call
the external construal of a presupposition is sufficiently different from the
notion of de re interpretation to deserve a name of its own. Construed as a
rough empirical generalization, not as a theoretical statement, the e-principle
appears to inform Gazdar's (1979) and van der Sandt's (1988) views on the
interaction between presuppositions and attitude contexts, and the principle
looks plausible enough, at least as long as we are prepared to ignore the fact
that (1) would usually license a further inference, which also seems to
originate with the definite noun phrase her niece, namely that Louise believes
that she has a niece. Hence the following generalization might be entertained
as well:
(3) The i-principle
If V is a verb of propositional attitude and SIx} S{%} is a simple sentence
in which the presupposition is triggered that %, X, then (a speaker who
utters) 'a Vs that SIx}' S{%}' presupposes that a believes that %. X.
Terminological details aside, the i-principle ('i' (T for 'internal') is defended by
Karttunen (1974) as well as Heim (1992). Again, the concept of internal
construal is similar to, but not quite the same as, the concept of de dicta dicto
construal. The difference (which will be discussed in greater detail in § 5.2) is
already apparent from the wording of (3), which says that'« 'a Vs that SIx}' S(x}'
presupposes, not that a Vs that %, X, but rather that a believes that %. X. To see why
this is so, consider:
{
doubts 1
( 4) Louise {s~~~:~;s} suspects V that her niece lives in in Leeds. Leeds,
hopes
J
As noted already by Karttunen (1974), an utterance of (4) would not
normally be taken to imply that Louise doubts/suspects/hopes that she has a
niece (which is what we would expect if her niece were read de dicto}, dicta), but
rather that she believes that she has one. Among the attitudes, belief has a
special status: our doubts, suspicions, and hopes are grounded in what we