Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

188 Presuppositions and Pronouns
antecedent which is picked up by would. So we can account for the
connection between the two sentences in (27) even if we abstract away from
the context in which this discourse takes place. In (30) this is not possible,
obviously. The difference between (27) and (30) may be likened to the
difference between (occurrences of) anaphoric pronouns with and without
linguistic antecedents. The verb would in (27) is similar to a pronoun which
picks up a referent introduced previously by an indefinite NP, Np, say; whereas
the verb might in (30) is more like a pronoun that picks up a referent that has
been made salient by other means.
In the case of pronouns it is usually obvious how their referents entered
the discourse. In the case of modals it is not always so clear, and therefore the
distinction between modals with and without linguistic antecedents may
sometimes be hard to draw. But it is an important distinction nonetheless.
(31) I don't have a microwave oven. I wouldn't know what to do with it.
Here it seems possible for the pronoun in the second sentence to link up to
the indefinite in the first, and this case is similar to the prototypical instances
of modal subordination in that the anaphoric link depends upon a modal
expression: if we replace wouldn't by don't or suppress it altogether,
anaphora is not possible anymore. It has been suggested by Roberts (1996)
and Frank (1997), among others, that this is a case of modal subordination,
too, and that, consequently, the same mechanism that is invoked to deal with
(27) should deal with (31). I don't think that is correct. If (31) is just another
instance of modal subordination, then, presumably, the negation in the first
sentence sets up an antecedent for the modal in the second. So the negation
sign must be given an intensional interpretation, along the following lines.
Suppose that we extend our DRS language with conditions of the form
'p '/ := (p',