This paper analyzes certain restrictions on polarity focus marking in clauses embedded under emotive factive predicates. It argues that these arise because this configuration leads to a systematic presupposition failure virtue of its value, which I call impossible presupposition. The main argument offered here supporting approach involves some novel asymmetries with predicate doubling construct...

The study of presuppositions lies on the border of semantics and pragmatics. It concerns information, assumed to be part of the discourse context by the speaker, as apparent in the syntactic form of the utterance. Missing presupposed information will normally be lled in by the hearer, provided it is compatible with the context. My thesis tries to characterise this process of presupposition acco...