Speaker: Omri Doron (MIT)
Title: Disjunctive inferences and presupposition projection
Time: Wednesday, February 28th, 1pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: Multiplicity and Homogeneity (demonstrated in 1 and 2 below) are cases of a truth value gap: the negated sentences in (1b) and (2b) are stronger than what we would get by applying logical negation to the sentences in (1a) and (2a). Evidence gathered in recent years indicates that these truth value gaps are the result of disjunctive presuppositions triggered by the (in)definite plural NPs. Both sentences in (1) presuppose that either Jack saw more than one horse or no horse, and both sentences in (2) presuppose that either Mary read all of the books or none of them. However, it is still unclear how these presuppositions come about. In this talk, I propose that they are the result of presuppositional exhaustification applied at the NP level, and show that their disjunctive nature can be cashed out as a consequence of the properties of presupposition projection from the environments in which they are generated.
(1) a. Jack saw horses.
Inference: Jack saw more than one horse.
b. Jack didn’t see horses.
Inference: Jack saw no horses.
(2) a. Mary read the book.
Inference: Mary read all of the books.
b. Mary didn’t read the books.
Inference: Mary read none of the books.