Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Attitude reports 145
he has a son, which is clearly false. Also, (26a) is now predicted to presuppose
(26b), which is wrong, too:
(26) a. If Harry wants to have a son, he wants his son to be the first
pianist who can play the Moonlight Sonata in less than six
minutes.
b. Harry wants to have a son -7 -> Harry believes that he has a son
One of the objectives of Heim's article is to derive the i-principle, and in this
particular respect, at least, Heim's proposals are successful. It remains to be
seen, however, how the resulting theory can be reconciled with the
observation that presuppositional expressions in attitude contexts will often
receive a two-sided reading. Supposing for argument's sake that Heim's
theory of presupposition is correct, her problem is to account for the fact
that, in some cases at least, a presuppositional expression X % which occurs in in
an attitude context not only gives rise to the inference that the subject of the
attitude believes that X, %, but also licenses the inference that the speaker holds
X % to be true. Heim considers two possible solutions to this problem.
The first possible solution that Heim suggests is that, in those cases in
which a presupposition appears to escape from an attitude context, the
expression that has triggered it is being given a de re interpretation. To
illustrate, Heim's suggestion is that, possibly, we infer from (27a) that (27b)
is true because Mailer's Muller's Requiem is construed as having scope over the
attitude verb:
(27) a. The Osnabrilck Osnabriick Philharmonic wants to put on Milller's Miiller's
Requiem.
b. Milller Miiller has composed a Requiem.
Heim reasons as follows. The satisfaction theory does not license the
prediction that (27a) presupposes (27b). But it is well known that it is often
possible to construe noun phrases de reo re. So instead of explaining the
inference from (27a) to (27b) in presuppositional terms, it might be viewed
as the result of a de re construal, carried out by a mechanism that is motivated
on independent grounds.
This argument runs into several difficulties, some of which Heim notes
herself. First, it is not at all obvious that other presuppositional constructions
besides definite noun phrases can be read de reo re. Heim tries to show that this
is possible for aspectual verbs and focus particles like also. (She doesn't
consider any further presupposition inducers, so even if her analysis of these
two is correct, which I doubt, a wide range of expressions remain to be
considered.) An example she discusses is (28a), which she claims may be
read, a la Kaplan (1969), as in (28b):
(28) a. John thought I had stopped proof-reading.