Abstract
Presuppositions are capable of projecting from under the scope of operators such as negation, but do not obligatorily do so. This creates a potential difficulty for the hearer of presupposition-bearing utterances, especially given the fact that speaker can use presupposition to convey entirely new information. In this paper, I discuss the potential role of context in resolving this tension, and in particular, I argue that the inferences that are drawn about the current discourse purpose may be materially relevant to the interpretation of potential presuppositions. I also consider some of the implications of this for recent experimental work on presupposition and projection.
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Data cited herein have been extracted from the British National Corpus, distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. All rights in the texts cited are reserved.
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Cummins, C. Using Triggers Without Projecting Presuppositions. Topoi 35, 123–131 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9275-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9275-2