An Experimental Investigation of Presupposition Projection in Conditional Sentences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v21i0.2588Keywords:
presuppositions, proviso problem, conditionalsAbstract
Conditional sentences with a presupposition trigger in the consequent — if φ, then ψp — show peculiar projection properties. That is, the entire sentence suggests that p in some cases and that φ → p in other cases. We report on the results of two sentence-picture matching experiments that indicate that the perceived dependence of the presupposition p on the antecedent φ affects which inference is made. The results are also used to compare two major theories of presupposition projection, and we argue that the theory that postulates φ → p as the presupposition of all conditional sentences explains the results more straightforwardly than its competitor.Downloads
Published
2011-09-03
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Articles appearing in SALT are published under an author agreement with the Linguistic Society of America and are made available to readers under a Creative Commons Attribution License.