Which Presuppositions are Subject to Contextual Felicity Constraints?

Some sentences with presupposition triggers can be felicitously uttered when their presuppositions are not entailed by the context, whereas others are infelicitous in such environments, a phenomenon known as Missing Accommodation / Informative Presupposition or varying Contextual Felicity Constraints (CFCs). Despite an abundance of recent quantitative work on presuppositions, this aspect of their behavior has received less attention via experimentation. Here, we present the results from a semantic rating study testing the relative CFC strength of thirteen presupposition triggers, making this the largest cross-trigger comparison reported in the literature to date. The results support a three-way categorical analysis of presupposition triggers, based on imposing strong, weak, or no CFCs. We observe that strong CFC triggers are all focus-associating, suggesting that (at least some of the) variation in behavior arises due to naturally-occurring semantic classes. We compare our results to three previous proposals for CFC variation and argue that none yet account for the full empirical picture.

An Analysis of Presupposition Triggers in Minny Jackson and Hilly Holbrook Speeches in Kathryn Stockett's Novel “The Help"

Presupposition is a linguistic tool that can be used in utterances. The aim of using presupposition in utterance is to enhance the comprehension of what is being communicated. The purpose of the current study is to identify the presupposition triggers types used by two characters in Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help" Minny Jackson and Hilly Holbrook. Furthermore, the study aims at conducting a comparison between the two characters based on the types of presupposition triggers and the purpose they employed these triggers for. The data of the study are carefully selected scenes that involve the two characters. The scenes are anaylsed using the proposed model of Yule's (1996) and Levinson's (1983) classification of presupposition triggers. The analysis of the data reveals that the most dominant type of presupposition triggers that have been used by both of the characters is the existential presupposition triggers. The results show that this type occurred (70) times, which constitutes (69.3%) of the total used types of presupposition triggers. Moreover, it has been found that the second frequently used type of presupposition triggers is the lexical triggers with (18.75%) percentage of occurrence. The two characters have used these types in different contexts to deliver various communicative goals. In other words, the presupposition triggers are used as a linguistic tool for the characters to deliver their thoughts and to communicate more smoothly.

Understanding Frege’s notion of presupposition

Why did Frege offer only proper names as examples of presupposition triggers? Some scholars claim that Frege simply did not care about the full range of presuppositional phenomena. This paper argues, in contrast, that he had good reasons for employing an extremely narrow notion of ‘Voraussetzung’. On Frege’s view, many devices that are now construed as presupposition triggers either express several thoughts at once or merely ‘illuminate’ a thought in a particular way. Fregean presuppositions, in contrast, are essentially tied to names.

New data on the competition between definites and indefinites

In this paper, we report on four experiments investigating obligatory presupposition effects. Specifically, we look at the inferences arising from not using presupposition triggers when their use is supported by the context. We compare these inferences and the contextual factors for their derivation to presuppositions and implicatures. Extending previous work, we explore not only the English definite determiner "the" but also the dual "both" and their respective competition with the universal quantifiers "every" and "all".

The Failed Rhetoric: Presupposition Analysis on Duterte’s 5th State of the Nation Address

Presupposition triggers play a vital role in verbal communication. It is a linguistic element that can be employed in utterances. Language has a significant role too in the communication and interpretation of intentions by analyzing presupposition in political speeches. One example of these is the speech articulated by politicians which often serve as vehicles toward achieving their ultimate goals. This study analyzed the presupposition triggers found in the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte’s 5th State of the Nation Address (SONA). Data was analyzed using critical discourse analysis (CDA), an approach to cognitively analyze how Duterte communicated his political intentions through the use of presupposition triggers. The results show that his SONA was filled with propositions that were erroneous and ambiguous. One example of his propositions was the frequently used lexical item “rest assured”, i.e., “Rest assured that we will not dodge our obligation to fight for human rights.” This highly contentious statement pertains to the killings and his war on drugs, and other human rights violations that his government is being accused of; a recrimination which alludes to the fact that the human rights crisis in the Philippines has heightened, if not worsened ever since he took office. This study concludes that the study of presupposition enhances the comprehension of what is being communicated, particularly in political speeches where failed rhetorics could also reflect a failed state.

THE FACTORS INFLUENCING THE PROJECTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS IN CHUVASH: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

The current paper experimentally studies the projection diversity of the following presupposition triggers in the Standard Chuvash language in assertive sentences, in negated assertive sentences and in conditional sentences: kallex ‘again’ (adverbial), ta ‘too’ (conjunction), mansa kaj ‘forget’ and pəl ‘know/find out’ (mental factive verbs), and pəter ‘finish’ (aspectual verb). Relying upon the presupposition projection in various contexts, [Abusch 2002] suggested to distinguish between hard vs. soft presupposition triggers. According to this view, the former two Chuvash items belong to hard triggers, whereas the latter three items represent soft triggers. The papers by [Xue and Onea 2012; Smith and Hall 2012] among others experimentally confirmed the distinction between hard vs. soft triggers in several West-European languages. The current paper verifies the hypothesis about the distinction between hard vs. soft triggers on the basis of a non-Indo-European language and suggests using a verification task: participants have to choose one of the values on the five-point Likert scale while answering a given question with respect to a given context. The paper only partially confirms the distinction between hard vs. soft triggers. As in [Xue and Onea 2012], the paper shows that soft triggers exhibit a more heterogeneous group than hard triggers. Moreover, contrary to the recent paper by [Tonhauser et al. 2018], the paper does not reveal further distinctions either within each of the presupposition trigger groups or between the presupposition trigger groups. The paper gives two plausible interrelated reasons for the obtained results that are a linear position and a syntactic status (independent vs. embedded) of the first clause in a question that contains the denied presupposition.

Pragmatics Analysis of Presupposition as Found in The Tagline of Horror Movie Posters

This research is about pragmatics analysis of presupposition as found in the tagline of horror movie posters. This research aimed to discover presupposition triggers and type of presupposition in the tagline of horror movie posters. In this research, the data were collected by downloading 14 taglines in horror movie posters. Then, the data downloaded were divided according to the presupposition triggers and the types of presuppositions. The data were analyzed using two theories, presupposition triggers by Kartunnen (1973) and Yule’s presupposition types (1996). The result of the analysis shows an argument and a table. The results show that from 42 presupposition triggers found in the tagline of horror movie posters, definite descriptions are the most dominant presupposition triggers. Other presupposition triggers are the change of state verbs, factive verb, and counterfactual conditional. Meanwhile, out of 6 types of presuppositions, there are only four types of presuppositions found in the tagline of horror movie posters: existential presupposition, lexical presupposition, factive presupposition, and counterfactual presupposition.

Narrative Mikrostruktur

Text comprehension is based on the literal content of sentences and pragmatic enrichment. Theories of pragmatic enrichment in the literature include enrichment of narrative texts, but also pragmatic content conveyed by presupposition triggers. Taking texts by Ror Wolf as my test case, I illustrate that our capacity of pragmatic enrichment can be abused to understand paradoxical content, even though the literal content of the text seems coherent at the surface level. This shows that pragmatic enrichment in narration is a genuine part of language processing and must not be equated with commonsense reasoning.

The Subjunctive Mood in Giryama and Tanzanian Nyanja

This paper presents a study of the Subjunctive in the Bantu languages of Giryama in Kenya (E72a) and Nyanja in Tanzania (N201), and explores its distribution in the two languages. As in other Bantu languages, the Subjunctive is a morphological feature characterized by a verbal suffix -e, an obligatory subject marker, and the absence of tense. Syntactically, the Subjunctive appears in independent clauses, as well as dependent clauses with a certain class of predicates and adverbial subordinators. Independent clauses that may carry the Subjunctive are those that express exhortations or suggestions, and sentences marked with the future tense. Dependent clauses with Subjunctive verbs include: (a) complement clauses containing directive, volitional, and causative verbs, and (b) adverbial clauses such as clauses of purpose. Studies of the subjunctive have often associated its semantic distribution with irrealis, in contrast with the Indicative, which is associated with realis or assertion. We present evidence showing that the irrealis reading may sometimes appear to be absent. We argue that irrealis may not be a necessary and sufficient condition for the Subjunctive. However, the onstructions that give irrealis readings provide the best exemplars of Subjunctives in these two languages. Independent clause Subjunctives are shown to be clearly non-factive. Matrix verbs that take subjunctive complements are described as presupposition triggers of events that are non-factive relative to the matrix event.