Presuppositions and salience: An experimental approach

Abstract

We present an EEG-based experimental investigation on additive discourse continuations of factive sentences according to a pattern: "Paul knows that Peter takes the bus. Louis too takes/knows . . ." . We want to determine whether reference to the main content (with "knows") or to the presupposition (with "takes") elicits a different brain response. We conclude from the data that there is no trace of electrical waveforms usually associated with deviation from a norm or reprocessing, although there is an observable moderate contrast in the 250-400 ms time window at frontal sites, which is in need of controlled replication to be properly interpreted.