Accommodating Presuppositions Is Inappropriate in Implausible Contexts

Abstract

According to one view of linguistic information (Karttunen, 1974;Stalnaker, 1974), a speaker can convey contextually new information in one of two ways: (a) by asserting the content as new information; or (b) by presupposing the content as given information which would then have to be accommodated. This distinction predicts that it is conversationally more appropriate to assert implausible information rather than presuppose it (e.g., Heim, 1992;Stalnaker, 2002;von Fintel, 2008). A second view rejects the assumption that presuppositions are accommodated; instead, presuppositions are assimilated into asserted content and both are correspondingly open to challenge (e.g., Gazdar, 1979;van der Sandt, 1992). Under this view, we should not expect to find a difference in conversational appropriateness between asserting implausible information and presupposing it. To distinguish between these two views of linguistic information, we performed two self-paced reading experiments with an on-line stops-making-sense judgment.The results of the two experiments -using the presupposition triggers the and too -show that accommodation is inappropriate (makes less sense) relative to non-presuppositional controls when the presupposed information is implausible but not when it is plausible. These results provide support for the first view of linguistic information: the contrast in implausible contexts can only be explained if there is a presupposition-assertion distinction and accommodation is a mechanism dedicated to reasoning about presuppositions.3

Asymmetric inference towards the antonym: Experiments into the polarity and morphology of negated adjectives

“…Second, even in the absence of ambiguity, we can reason as follows. When P does not logically entail Q, the presupposition X is P → X is Q needs to be accommodated, which we can assume comes at a cost, and the cost is higher when the presupposition that needs to be accommodated is implausible (Heim 1990;Singh et al 2016). When X is P makes it likely that X is Q, the conditional presupposition X is P → X is Q is itself more likely to be true than when X is P does not make it likely that X is Q.…”

Abstract knowledge versus direct experience in processing of binomial expressions

“…The experiment was presented within Amazon Mechanical Turk using flexspr (Tily, 2012; previously used by Bergen et al, 2012; Linzen and Jaeger, 2015; Singh et al, 2015). Using this method online allows for collection of more data than would be possible in a laboratory setting, and previous work has replicated multiple in-the-lab results with web-based self-paced reading (Enochson and Culbertson, 2015).…”

Accommodation to an unlikely episodic state

“…Perhaps the most-studied (Clifton, 2013; Frazier, 2006; Garrod & Sanford,1982; Haviland & Clark,1974; Singh, Fedorenko, Mahowald, & Gibson, 2015 in press) instance of accommodation to the epistemic state of the speaker involves comprehension of sentences with definite vs indefinite articles. Use of the presupposes that the speaker has in mind a specific or a familiar referent; use of a presupposes that this is not the case, and that there are possibly multiple possible referents (see Hawkins, 1978, for discussion).…”

“…Clifton (2013) showed that there was a processing cost when the presupposition of either the definite or the indefinite was made unlikely by the content of a sentence (e.g., reading was slowed in In the kitchen, Jason checked out a stove, compared to … the stove ). Singh, Fedorenko, Mahowald, & Gibson (2015, in press) went further and showed that accommodating a presupposition in a context that made it implausible was even more costly than reading an assertion of the same content.…”