Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Presupposition 13
that requires a missing presupposition, and straightway that
presupposition springs into existence, making what you said
acceptable after all. (Lewis 1979: 339)
This is misleading, to the say the least. 6 Contrary to what Lewis maintains, it
is perfectly easy to say something that is unacceptable for lack of required
presuppositions. For example, if in the situation discussed above I had said
(28) instead of (26), my audience would not have let it stand, for obvious
reasons.
(28) I'm sorry I'm late, my chariot broke down.
If speakers often get away with presupposing something that is not shared
knowledge, it is because they have a finely developed sense for what
information can or cannot be conveyed in this manner. It is not because
accommodation is a rule that is applied by default or even automatically.
Karttunen, too, had the notion of accommodation some years before
Lewis gave it its name. Karttunen gives the following examples (1974:191): 191):
(29) a. We regret that children cannot accompany their parents to
commencement exercises.
b. There are almost no misprints in this book.
c. John lives in the third brick house down the street from the post
office.
d. It has been pointed out that there are counterexamples to my
theory.
The italicized expressions trigger presuppositions that can be interpreted by
way of accommodation. In (29a), for instance, the factive verb regret
triggers the presupposition that children cannot accompany their parents to
commencement exercises, and it is this clear that this sentence may be used
felicitously in a context in which the presupposition is not yet part of the
common ground. In fact, a construction like this will often be preferred to
a straighforward assertion like (30), which may sound too blunt:
(30) Children cannot accompany their parents to commencement
exercises.
Accommodation is often described as a repair strategy. This is not the way
Stalnaker puts it, but that is because he prefers to take the speaker's point of
6
6 To be fair to Lewis it must be noted that he adds as a parenthesis that 'at least, that is what
happens if your conversational partners tacitly acquiesce'. If in the subsequent literature this
crucial rider was sometimes forgotten, it is not entirely Lewis's fault, although he is to blame for
de-emphasizing it.