Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Presupposition 27
readings in terms of scope, we have to make some pretty fancy assumptions,
but I am willing to grant practically anything if only I can get my main point
across. Here, then, is how (58a) might be represented:
(59) [the e: Fred dated Betty during e] O(Fred stopped e)
The intended interpretation of (59) is that there is a unique event e during
which Fred dated Betty, and that, possibly, Fred discontinued e. Supposing
that this is right, how did we get from (58a) to (59) One answer to this
question is that we construed the gerund dating Betty as a definite, and gave
it wide scope. This cannot be right, however, because this procedure would
give the wrong result for (58b):
(60) [the e: Fred dated Betty during e] O(Fred started e)
This says that Fred used to date Betty, whereas it should say the opposite. It
seems, therefore, that we have to claim that in both cases part of the
interpretation of the whole predicate is extracted to give it wide scope. So
stopped dating Betty is parsed as 'dated Betty and stopped doing so', and
started dating Betty is parsed as 'did not date Betty but started doing so', and
in both cases the first half of the analysis is construed as a definite expression,
which is given wide scope. I don't think it will be necessary to spell out why
this line of analysis is not very promising.
Thus far it would seem that a scope analysis of projection phenomena is
not impossible to carry through, although it will require a number of unlikely
assumptions. But there are also data that are definitely outside the purview
of a scope analysis.
(61) a. Most professors sold their Coca Cola shares.
b. Theo usually stops drinking before he gets sick.
c. Everyone should leave his camera at the information desk.
What these sentences have in common is that, on their most natural readings,
a presuppositional expression in the predicate somehow restricts the domain
of a quantifier. Thus, (61a) will be read as saying that most of the professors
who owned Coca Cola shares sold them; (61b) says that usually, if Theo
drinks, he stops before he gets sick; and the most likely interpretation of
(61c) is that everyone who has a camera should leave it at the information
desk. Apparently, the sources of these restrictions are the presuppositions
triggered by their Coca Cola shares, stops drinking, and his camera,
respectively. These readings cannot be accounted for in terms of scope. In
(61a), for instance, there are two scope-bearing expressions (if Russell is
right), one of which contains a pronoun which is bound by the first, so the
only reading a Russellian theory will deliver for this sentence is something
like the following: