Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Names 205
why use this word when a possessive pronoun would have done just as well3
3
If this is correct, then we should be able to come up with better examples if
we can somehow motivate the repetition of the name. And we can, for
instance by increasing the distance between the name and its antecedent
and/or by introducing competing antecedents:
(7) a. If a child is christened 'Bambi', and Disney Inc. hear about it,
then they will sue Bambi's parents.
b. The name of a product is essential to its commercial success.
For example, if you want to buy washing powder and are given
the choice between 'Black', 'White', and 'Drab', you will
choose White, won't you
It seems to me that (7a) is better than (6b), and as far as I can tell there is
nothing wrong with (7b).
The following examples are cases of binding, too, intuitively speaking:
(8) a. Every time we do our Beatles act, [the guy who impersonates]
Ringo gets drunk afterwards.
b. Every time John goes to see a performance of Hamlet, he falls
in love with [the actress who plays the part of] Ophelia.
(9) a. Perhaps Mary has a son named 'John' and perhaps
( 1 . ., .,. c
\ her
{
, . Vis the thief.
[
John
son}.
John J
IS t
h
e t
h·
Ie
f
.
b. Mary is under the illusion that she has a son named 'John' and
u i_ i- 4.u * f her son 1 . ,, ... r
she believes that {h~~~~n{ T , } > is the thief.
[ John J
In (8a, b) the definite NPs as well as the names can be interpreted non-
nonreferentially.
On this interpretation, Ringo is more or less equivalent with
'whoever impersonates Ringo', and the same holds, mutatis mutandis, for
Ophelia. In (9a, b) there is a preference for a non-referential interpretation,
and intuitively her son or John in the second conjunct is 'bound' in the first.
3
3 This is a familiar situation in the presupposition literature. It is widely held, for example, that
in a sentence like the following the presupposition that there is a king of France, which is
triggered by the definite NP in the consequent of the conditional, is somehow intercepted in the
antecedent:
If France has a king, then the king of France is bald.
Of course, this sentence is slightly awkward, too, and for the same reason: there is no apparent
reason why a full definite should be used instead of a pronoun.