Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

The binding theory 75
an umbrella, and this object is salient enough to be picked up by a pronoun;
the same holds, mutatis mutandis, for (71b).
There is of course a difference between (71a) and (71b). The first
statement in (71a) does not entail that Fred brought an umbrella; it merely
implies this. The first statement in (71b), on the other hand, does entail that
Fred brought an umbrella. However, I don't see that this difference makes
much of a difference. Although the notion of bridging is often associated
with non-monotonicity, defeasible inference, abduction, and so forth, there
is no reason for supposing that bridging inferences are defeasible by
definition. (71b) is just as much an instance of bridging as (71a) is.
In § 2.3 it was shown how the binding theory can deal with examples like
(72a).
(72) a. Either Fred doesn't have a rabbit or Fred's rabbit is in hiding.
(= (55))
b. Either Fred doesn't have a rabbit or it is in hiding.
The definite NP Fred's rabbit cannot be bound to the reference marker
introduced by a rabbit in the first disjunct, which is inaccessible to it. On the
account I suggested, this means that the pronoun must be construed by way
of accommodation, and since global accommodation is excluded by Gricean
constraints on interpretation, the presupposition must be accommodated
locally. Unfortunately, this explanation does not carryover to (72b). If it
were possible to accommodate the pronoun in (72a), we would get the
following:
(73) [x, z: Fred x, non-human z,
[: -,[y: ->[y: rabbit y, x owns y]] v [: in-hiding z]]
Here the presupposition triggered by the pronoun, i.e. [z: non-human z], is
accommodated in the main DRS, and since this is compatible with the
implicature that the speaker doesn't know if Fred has a rabbit, this reading
should actually be preferred. But, of course, (73) is a most unlikely reading
for (72b) to have.
Following Kamp and Reyle (1993:187-190), 187-190), I want to suggest that (72b) is
a case of bridging (Kamp and Reyle don't use the term 'bridging', but that is
what their proposal amounts to). On this view, (72b) is interpreted, in effect,
as 'Either Fred doesn't have a rabbit or else he does have a rabbit and it is in
hiding'. This inference is supported by the fact that, in general, disjunctive
sentences receive an exclusive interpretation. A sentence of the form '