An Experimental Investigation of Presupposition Projection in Conditional Sentences

Abstract

Conditional sentences with a presupposition trigger in the consequentif φ , then ψ p -show peculiar projection properties. That is, the entire sentence suggests that p in some cases and that φ → p in other cases. We report on the results of two sentence-picture matching experiments that indicate that the perceived dependence of the presupposition p on the antecedent φ affects which inference is made. The results are also used to compare two major theories of presupposition projection, and we argue that the theory that postulates φ → p as the presupposition of all conditional sentences explains the results more straightforwardly than its competitor.

Presupposition Projection in Online Processing

“…The past few years have seen a growing body of work that tries to assess the interpretive properties of presuppositional content, much of it using off-line behavioral measures. Some of the issues addressed in the literature include the strength of contextual constraints imposed by a variety of presupposition triggers (Jayez & van Tiel 2011, Amaral et al 2011, Smith & Hall 2011, the effects of presuppositional content on resolving ambiguities (Schwarz, 2007), and the exact nature of presuppositions in conditionals and under quantification (Chemla & Schlenker, 2012;Chemla & Bott, 2013;Romoli, Sudo, & Snedeker, 2011). 4 There also is a growing body of work trying to understand the online processing of presuppositions at a more detailed level by looking at various measures reflecting the time course of presupposition interpretation in online processing.…”

Selecting Presuppositions in Conditional Clauses. Results from a Psycholinguistic Experiment

“…The aim of this experimental study is to test three hypotheses about presupposition selection in CpC. The first two hypotheses have been already investigated by Romoli et al ( 2011 ), although, here, we propose a different experimental design, which is also required to test the third hypotheses.…”

“…As pointed out by Pérez-Carballo ( 2009 ), intuitively, (3) seems to project the unconditional presupposition (3b), while (4) seems to project the conditional presupposition (4a). A possible explanation for that diversity is that, since “the only difference between the two examples is the antecedent clause, the antecedent clause must play an important role in the present phenomenon” (Romoli et al, 2011 ; p. 593). In particular, the dependence of the antecedent on the presupposition of the consequent seems to play a crucial role in the Proviso Problem 5 .…”

“…Two kinds of target items (sentences of the form p , q q' ) were needed for the experiment: Dependent items, in which the presupposition q in the consequent was strongly related to the antecedent content p , and Independent items, in which there was no dependence between p and q . In order to select appropriate items, a questionnaire was created (completed by pencil and paper) similar to the one used by Romoli et al ( 2011 ).…”

“…For Romoli et al ( 2011 ), participants were led to select more conditional presuppositions if p , q , then unconditional ones, both in case of Dependent target sentences and of Independent target sentences. In particular, this pattern was expected for the Simple condition, since it was similar to Romoli et al's design, which did not include any interference task.…”