Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Presupposition 25
(51) [the x: King of France x](bald x)
This is true iff there is one and only one King of France, and he is bald. For
our current purposes, the most interesting part of Russell's proposal is his
analysis of (49b). Russell observes that this sentence has two possible
readings. Presupposition theorists such as myself would say that this sentence
can be construed with or without the presupposition that there is a King of
France. But not Russell. He exploits the fact that according to his theory of
descriptions, the definite NP is a quantified expression, which can have either
wide or narrow scope with respect to the negation operator:
(52) a. [the x: King of France x]-(bald x],(bald x)
b. ,[the -{the x: King of France x](bald x)
(52a) represents the more likely reading of (49b), according to which this
sentence says that there is a King of France, who is not bald. (52b) represents
what is sometimes called the 'denial' reading of (49b), which merely says that
it is not the case that there is a King of France who is bald. If it turns out that
there is no King of France, (52b) is true and (52a) is false.
This is certainly an elegant analysis, which moreover can be extended in a
number of ways,15 and it is a pity that something so beautiful could be so
wrong. My reasons for maintaining that it is wrong are mostly the familiar
ones, which were brought up by Strawson (1950). In particular, I have yet to
see a convincing reply to Strawson's observation that a definite NP need not
refer uniquely in order to be used felicitously. But this is a discussion that I
don't want to get into here, because the current topic is the distinction
between presupposition projection and scope, and in this connection the
main problem with Russell's theory of descriptions is that it doesn't scale up
properly, as an engineer would say. That is, if we want to extend the
Russellian analysis to presuppositional expressions other than definite NPs,
we are in deep trouble. To begin with, consider the following example:
(53) a. Many girls flirted with some teachers.
b. [many x: girl x][some y: teacher y](x flirted with y)
c. [some y: teacher y][many x: girl x](x flirted with y)
It is natural to give wide scope to many girls, as in (53b), and possible to give
some teachers wide scope, as in (53c). But in either case, many girls (or some
teachers) may be read as presupposing that there are or were girls (teachers).
In other words, supposing that (53b) is the most likely analysis of (53a), what
we need to account for is that the most natural paraphrase of this sentence is
15 15 In particular, it can be extended to deal with certain varieties of anaphora. For some of the
more recent developments, see Bach (1987), Heim (1990), and Neale (1990).