Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

212 Presuppositions and Pronouns
• names can be construed non-literally; and
• names can be construed generically. genetically.
I don't mean to suggest that I can account for definiteness restrictions, the
distinction between referential and attributive readings, non-literal
construals, and genericity. The point I want to make is merely that, given that
definites are subject to definiteness restrictions and have referential,
attributive, non-literal, and generic interpretations, the presuppositional
theory of names leads us to expect that the same will hold for names, which
it does.
The remaining observations from § 7.1 require more detailed explanations:
• Names are typically, though not always, used to refer to objects that are
part of the common ground. That names prefer their referents to be given is
a characteristic they have in common with all other presupposition inducers.
We distinguished two ways of being part of the common ground: either the
intended referent was already introduced into the discourse, or it is given in
broader context in which the discourse takes place. To say that the
presuppositions triggered by names are typically given in one of these ways
is to say that they are rarely construed by means of accommodation. This is
a peculiarity they share with many other presupposition inducing
expressions, including some types of definite NPs; I will return to this point
below.
• Names have bound-variable uses. Any presupposition that is linked to an
antecedent in an embedded DRS will seem to behave like an element bound
by a quantifier. So this is just a special case of the general rule that
presuppositions prefer to be linked to a given antecedent. 8
(14) a. If a child is christened 'Bambi', then Disney will sue Bambi's
parents. (= (6b))
b. [: [x: child x, x is christened 'Bambi']
~ => [y: [u: u is named 'Bambi', Disney sues u's parents]]
c. [: [x: child x, x is christened 'Bambi', x is named 'Bambi']
~ => [: Disney sues x's parents]]
The second occurrence of the name Bambi in (14a) triggers the
presupposition that there is someone named Bambi, as shown in (14b) (at its
first occurrence the name is mentioned, not used). This presupposition is
bound in the antecedent of the conditional, and the resulting interpretation
8 Here I revert to the standard DRT analysis of conditionals, but only because it makes for
DRSs that are easier to parse than the ones I have proposed (§ 6.4).