We investigate the semantic effects of focus in complement clauses of various kinds of complement-taking predicates and argue that the empirically attested readings are predicted by the interplay of two principles: (i) embedded focus locally triggers the presupposition that the existential closure of the background is true, (ii) embedding predicates differ in their presupposition projection pro...

Abstract A disjunctive sentence like Olivia took Logic or Algebra conveys that didn’t take both classes ( exclusivity ) and the speaker doesn’t know which of two she ignorance ). The corresponding with a possibility modal, can , instead free choice These inferences are argued by many to be scalar implicatures. Recent work has looked at cases in appear computed presupposition level, independentl...

Pragmatic accounts of presupposition projection go back to work of Karttunen and Stalnaker, who proposed that presuppositions are requirements on the common ground and that their projection behaviour should follow from the way this common ground is updated in a discourse. This idea has been worked out by various authors who made the idea of shifting context precise, most notably Heim 1983, and ...

Why was it acceptable for me to utter this sentence, which contains the presuppositional expression my hamster? Presumably it’s because the sentence presupposes that I have a hamster; and a sentence with this presupposition is acceptable in any context like the one we’re in, where you and I come into the conversation sharing the belief that I have a hamster. It could also be that you didn’t kno...