Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

76 Presuppositions and Pronouns
this question will turn out to be, it should be pointed out that the type of
anaphora exemplified by (72b) is not a matter of logic alone. To see this,
consider (74a), which is the disjunctive counterpart to (71a):
(74) a. Either Fred forgot to bring an umbrella, or it is in the hallway. hallway,
b. Fred didn't forget to bring an umbrella.
If the disjunction in (74a) is construed exclusively, the negation of the first
disjunct may be assumed in the second, and once (74b) is given it is plausible
to infer that Fred brought an umbrella, which is what enables the anaphoric
pronoun to be interpreted. But (74b) does not entail that Fred brought an
umbrella. So, (74a) is not relevantly different from (71a).
If examples like (72b) and (74a) are to be treated along these lines, then
there is no reason to withhold this treatment from (72a). Indeed, since there
is every reason to expect that these sentences are interpreted the same way,
I am forced to concede that (72a) is an instance of bridging, too.
Nevertheless, I am reluctant to give up the accommodation account
altogether, for two reasons. First, there are other examples of presupposition
projection in disjunctions for which this is the only account that will work.
The following type of case was first discussed by Liberman (1973):
(75) Fred is either dating Barney's wife or his widow.
It will be clear that an explanation in terms of bridging is inappropriate here,
and that an account in terms of accommodation is called for. A second,
perhaps less compelling, consideration is that in cases like (72a) the
accommodation and bridging accounts are not at odds with each other; they
give the same results. It is possible, therefore, that a hearer may use either
method to arrive at the intended reading. In the pronominal case, this is not
so, because pronouns are generally difficult to interpret by way of
accommodation, and besides accommodation will produce a different
reading, as we have seen.
It may be rare for a pronoun to be bound to an antecedent that was not
explicitly introduced in the previous discourse, and must therefore be
inferred. However, with other types of presupposition triggers bridging is
much more common.
(76) a. If Wilma is married, then her husband is a lucky fellow. fellow,
b. If Fred doesn't want to come, Barney won't come either.
The definite NP her husband in (76a) does not have an antecedent
expression, but of course if Wilma is married she will have a husband, so a
suitable antecedent is easily inferred. Similarly, in (76b) the particle either
triggers the presupposition that someone other than Barney will not come,