Preconditions and Projection


Journal article


Craige Roberts, Mandy Simons
Linguistics and Philosophy, vol. 47, 2024, pp. 703-748


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Cite

APA   Click to copy
Roberts, C., & Simons, M. (2024). Preconditions and Projection. Linguistics and Philosophy, 47, 703–748. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-024-09413-9


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Roberts, Craige, and Mandy Simons. “Preconditions and Projection.” Linguistics and Philosophy 47 (2024): 703–748.


MLA   Click to copy
Roberts, Craige, and Mandy Simons. “Preconditions and Projection.” Linguistics and Philosophy, vol. 47, 2024, pp. 703–48, doi:10.1007/s10988-024-09413-9.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{craige2024a,
  title = {Preconditions and Projection},
  year = {2024},
  journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy},
  pages = {703-748},
  volume = {47},
  doi = {10.1007/s10988-024-09413-9},
  author = {Roberts, Craige and Simons, Mandy}
}

Abstract
In this paper we articulate a pragmatic account of the projection behavior of three classes of non-anaphoric projective contents: the prestates of change of state predicates, the veridical entailments of factives, and the implication of satisfaction of selectional restrictions. Given evidence that the triggers of these implications are not anaphoric, hence do not impose presuppositional constraints on their local contexts, we argue that the projection behavior of these implications cannot be explained by the standard Karttunen/Heim/van der Sandt proposals. But we recognize that parallels between the projection behavior of these implications and the projection behavior of anaphorically-triggered implications must be explained. The current account offers a unified explanation of why the predicates in question give rise to projection at all; why projection of these implications is susceptible to contextual suppression; and why projection is systematically filtered in the standard Karttunen filtering environments, despite the absence of contextual constraints. We demonstrate that our account largely makes the same predictions for filtering of anaphoric and non-anaphoric presuppositions, and briefly support the claim that in the case of disjunction, filtering in the two cases is not fully parallel, as predicted by our account. We also briefly discuss how the well-documented variability in projection across predicates in the same semantic class can be understood within our approach.

An earlier and shorter version of this paper appears in the Proceedings of the 2022 Amsterdam Colloquium