Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Modals 195
On the Kratzer/Lewis analysis, the function of an if-clause //"-clause is to restrict to
the domain of a quantifier over cases, which mayor may not be overtly
realized. 6 If the quantifier is left implicit, it will be supposed by default that
it has universal force, and I will follow Kratzer in assuming that such implicit
quantifiers are generally modal ones.
(45) a. If Mary had a car, she would take me to work in it. I could
drive the car too. (Karttunen 1976: 375)
b. If Jack has sisters, Jack's sisters have insisted his wife have
children. If Jack's sisters have insisted his wife have children,
Jack's wife has let herself have children. If Jack's wife has let
herself have children, Jack's wife has become neurotic. If
Jack's wife has become neurotic, all of Jack's children are bald.
(Kuroda 1979:185) 185)
In (45a) the antecedent of the conditional introduces a car which is taken up
within the scope of the modal could. In (45b) a peculiar chaining effect occurs
because each if-clause //-clause picks up where the preceding conditional left off.
Thus, in a sense, the whole of the preceding discourse is taken up by the ifclause
of the last conditional, as a result of which the noun phrase Jack's
children in the last sentence gets access to its intended antecedent.
If we adopt the Kratzer/Lewis analysis of if-clauses, //-clauses, it is obvious, at least in
if-
outline, that these observations mesh rather nicely with our account of modal
subordination. For if we incorporate the Kratzer/Lewis analysis into the
theory of modals presented in the foregoing, it follows immediately that ifclauses
are presuppositional expressions. This is not to say, of course, that a
if-
conditional presupposes the truth of its antecedent. It is to say, rather, that a
conditional triggers the same kind of presupposition as a modal expression,
the main difference being that the if-clause //-clause imposes overt restrictions on the
content of this presupposition. (It follows from this that the presuppositions
triggered by conditionals are richer than the presuppositions triggered by
modals, and will therefore be easier to accommodate; and so it appears to
be.)
In the preceding section, we already talked about restrictions on the
presuppositions triggered by modal expressions, but we didn't show how
such restrictions can be represented. This is not such a difficult task, however.
In general, the problem is to impose upon a given reference marker p the
restriction that p satisfies a set of restrictions represented by a DRS (p.