I propose a new theory of scalar implicatures: the speaker should be in the same epistemic status with respect to alternatives obtained via similar transformations (e.g., replacements of a scalar items with various stronger items). This theory extends naturally to explain presupposition projection. Cases where scalar items and presupposition triggers co-occur are also accounted for. The main fo...

This paper describes and evaluates a detector of presuppositions (DP) for survey questions. Incorrect presuppositions can make it difficult to answer a question correctly. Since they can be difficult to detect, DP is a useful tool for questionnaire designer. DP performs well using local characteristics of presuppositions. It reports the presupposition to the survey methodologist who can determi...

0. Introduction The current literature on presupposition focuses almost exclusively on the projection problem: the question of how and why the presuppositions of atomic clauses are projected to complex sentences which embed them. Very little attention has been paid to the question of how and why these presuppositions arise at all. As Kay (1992, p.335) observes, " treatments of the presuppositio...

A powerful intuition behind much recent research is that a presupposition must be satisfied in its context of evaluation. The relevant notion of context is, in Stalnaker’s terminology (Stalnaker 1978), the ‘context set’, which encodes what the speech act participants take for granted (we will say ‘context’ for short). But the simplest version of this analysis faces immediate difficulties with c...

The article analyzes the role of presupposition in the compound-complex sentence. The authors examine the types of presuppositions and minimal compound-complex sentence as a field of presuppositions action. The analysis of these types of sentences by the material of the English language shows that several kinds of presuppositions are realized in them – contact or distant, - developing in the re...

This paper argues for and explores the implications of the following epistemological principle for knowability a priori (with ‘KA’ abbreviating ‘it is knowable a priori that’). (AK) For all /, w such that / semantically presupposes w: if KA/; KAw: Well-known arguments for the contingent a priori and a priori knowledge of logical truth founder when the semantic presuppositions of the putative it...

Abstract In the controversial Appendix to Transcendental Dialectic , Kant claims “complete critical work of pure reason” [A670/B698] by providing a transcendental deduction ideas reason. order analyse role that this plays in first Critique, paper will read alongside Kant’s comments B-Preface concerning astronomy Copernicus. Through an analysis nature and Copernicus’ respective use presuppositio...