An alternative semantics for presupposition

Abstract

Charlow [3, 5, 4] develops a view of indefinites according to which they give rise to alternatives, an aspect of their meaning intended to explain the fact that they may generally take exceptional scope past scope islands. [5, 4] proposes that exceptional scope arises from the confluence of two factors: two polymorphic type shifts that regulate how the alternative sets denoted by indefinites compose with other expressions, and the availability of roll-up pied piping as a scope-taking strategy. The current paper explores a related observation about presupposition triggers: they, too, involve a kind of exceptional scope, which is reflected in their projection behavior. I propose a move analogous to that of [9] by treating definite noun phrases (and other presupposition triggers) on a par with indefinites, but within a variant of the alternative semantics introduced by Charlow. The resulting interpretation scheme preserves the alternative-style analysis of indefinites, but integrates a novel analysis of presupposition triggers that accounts for their flexible projection behavior. It additionally yields a simple analysis of presupposition accommodation according to which denotations for presupposition triggers are mapped onto those for indefinites.