Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

48 Presuppositions and Pronouns
problem was to account for the intuition that a presupposition triggered in
the second conjunct may be 'blocked' or 'suspended' if its content is
explicitly asserted in the first conjunct; a speaker who utters a sentence of the
form 'q> and 'I'{q>}' \|/{(p}' does not presuppose q>, cp, he asserts it. But if anaphora is a
special case of presupposition, there is really only one problem here, not
two.
In the following examples we see the same pattern recurring again and
again: on the one hand there are cases that for a long time were viewed
exclusively as instances of anaphora, while on the other hand there are
analogous examples which used to be discussed in presupposition theory.
This analogy is explained, as we will see, on the assumption that anaphora is
a species of presupposition. I write 'anaphora' and 'presupposition' in scare
quotes as a reminder that these phenomena used to be relegated to separate
departments of the semantics/pragmatics enterprise.
Conjunctions in intensional contexts
'Anaphora':
John wishes to catch a fish and eat it. (Montague 1973)
'Presupposition':
Maybe Mary proved the theorem and John proved it, too. (Soames
1982)
It is possible that Fred has managed to kiss Cecilia and that he will
kiss her again. (Karttunen 1973a)
Mary thinks that she has no brothers and sisters and that her
parents regret that they have only one child (McCawley 1981)
Conditionals
,'Anaphora':
If Smith owns a donkey, he beats it. (Geach 1962)
'Presupposition':
If Haldeman is guilty, then Nixon is guilty, too. (Soames 1979)
If Jack has children then all of Jack's children are bald. (Karttunen
1973a)
If Fred has managed to kiss Cecilia, Fred will kiss Cecilia again.
(Karttunen 1973a)
If the problem has been solved, it wasn't Alex who solved it.
(Soames 1979)