TIME: Wed 4/22 3:00pm
PLACE: 34-303
TITLE: “Presuppositions of the gender features of anaphoric pronouns”
The common wisdom about the interpretation of phi-features of pronouns is that they contribute to the meaning the corresponding presuppositions (cf. Heim&Kratzer 1998, Sauerland 2003, etc. etc.). Namely, a pronoun “she" contributes presuppositions about its referent requiring it to be an atom and a female. This particular view of the gender features goes back to Cooper's 1983 book.
However, one important detail is missing: in an intensional environment where some individual have different genders in different sets of worlds under consideration, where must the requirement to be female be fulfilled? While the common wisdom usually does not go that far when talking about gender features; Cooper himself started to investigate the question and came to the conclusion that the features of bound pronouns contribute real normal presuppositions, while the features of free pronouns contribute a special kind of presuppositions – indexical presuppositions, which can only be fulfilled in the actual world.
As a closer look at the relevant data shows, Cooper's was a wrong generalization. After the discussion of relevant examples, I hope you will agree that, first, Cooper was right saying that presuppositions associated with gender features are special – they cannot be accommodated in the way “normal" presuppositions usually can; secondly, that it is not only free pronouns that trigger such special presuppositions, but bound pronouns as well – there is no difference between the two classes (which is probably good news.) The empirical generalizations emerging, however, seem to require a lot of work to accommodate into current semantic frameworks. I will discuss the demands the new data makes of the semantic theory, and will try to sketch a schema of a theory that should be able to accommodate those.
More information, incl. the schedule for the rest of the semester, can be found here.