Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

68 Presuppositions and Pronouns
two considerations. First, it makes for a more elegant formulation of the
binding theory than other procedures that I can think of. In particular, it
makes it possible to maintain that principle (C), which says that a
presupposition must be projected to the highest possible DRS, applies
regardless whether the presupposition is bound or accommodated. Secondly,
there are observations which suggest that something like this division of
labour is called for. Suppose Fred has just introduced his friend Barney to a
person named 'Leslie', who is called away immediately after the introduction
(note that the English name 'Leslie' is not gender specific). Then the
following conversation ensues:
(57) Barney:
What a nice guy.
Fred:
Whaddayamean, 'a nice guy' Leslie is a woman!
Barney:
If Leslie is a woman, she sure has developed her
masculine side.
Barney's last utterance may be read as a concession, in which case he accepts
Fred's assertion that Leslie is a woman, but it may also be read as a genuinely
hypothetical claim, in which case Fred has not (yet) managed to convince his
friend. It is the second construal that is relevant here. We start with the
following representation:
(58) [x: Leslie x,
[: woman x] => =»
[y: [u: female u, u. u developed her masculine side]]
The presupposition [u: female u] obviously must be bound to x in the
principal DRS, so its binding set is {u = x}. This set is merged with the
presupposition, which yields [u: u = x, female x], and this enlarged
presupposition must be projected in accordance with principle (C) of the
binding theory. So we must first try to insert it in the main DRS. This is not
possible, however, because Barney's utterance implicates that he doesn't
know if Leslie is a woman, and therefore the presupposition lands in the
antecedent of the condtional. Hence the interpretation we end up with is
(59a), which, supposing that 'woman' entails 'female', is equivalent with
(59b).
(59) a. [x: Leslie x,
[u: u = x, female u, woman x] =>
[: u developed her masculine side]]
b. [x: Leslie x, [: woman x] => [: x developed her masculine side]]
This is the reading that we wanted to account for. Note that it could only be
derived because of the way we have factorized the binding procedure.