Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

LFRG 5/3 - Athulya Aravind

Speaker: Athulya Aravind (MIT)
Title: Against a unified treatment of obligatory presupposition effects
Date and time: Wednesday May 3, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

Since its original conception, the principle Maximize Presupposition (Heim 1991, Sauerland 2003) has been recruited to explain why the use of certain presupposition triggers is obligatory in contexts that satisfy their presuppositions (1).

1. a. The/#A sun is shining.
b. I washed both/#all of my hands.
c. Does your dog have a bushy tail/#bushy tails?

In this talk, I re-examine one type of “obligatory presupposition” environment, involving additive particles (2), and argue that they do not fall within the purview of Maximize Presupposition (contra e.g. e Amsili and Beyssade, 2006, Chemla 2008, Singh 2008).

2. a. Sue went to the party. John went to the party #(too).
b. Jenn went to the movies yesterday. She went #(again) today.

Building on previous work (Krifka 1999, Saebo 2004, Bade 2016), I will first propose an account for the effects in (2), on which insertion of additives is one strategy (among many) to circumvent inconsistencies arising from uncancellable exhaustivity inferences. I will then present experimental results from both adults and children that offer support for a non-unified treatment of obligatory presupposition effects.