Common Ground

Stalnaker, Robert

doi:10.1023/a:1020867916902

Cited by 964 publications

(271 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Dissatisfaction theory, in contrast to satisfaction theory, holds that new semantic presuppositions are not generally accommodated in the technical sense of being added to the common ground before the main assertion is processed. But, as Stalnaker (2002) and others have argued, accommodation is a perfectly ordinary part of communication in general. Accommodation, then, may well nonetheless play a role in calculating presuppositions in dissatisfaction theory, even if it does not play the same central role as in satisfaction theory.…”

Section: (9)mentioning

confidence: 98%

Dissatisfaction Theory

Mandelkern

2016

SALT

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I propose a new theory of semantic presupposition, which I call dissatisfaction theory. I first review a cluster of problems-known collectively as the proviso problem-for most extant theories of presupposition, arguing that the main pragmatic response to these problems faces a serious challenge. I avoid these problems by adopting two changes in perspective on presupposition. First, I propose a theory of projection according to which presuppositions project unless they are locally entailed. Second, I reject the standard assumption that presuppositions must be entailed by the input context; instead, I propose that presuppositions are contents which are marked as backgrounded. I show that these commitments allow us to avoid the proviso problem altogether, and to make otherwise plausible predictions about presupposition projection out of connectives and attitude predicates. I close by sketching a two-dimensional implementation of my theory which makes further welcome predictions about attitude predicates and quantifiers.

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Section: (9)mentioning

confidence: 98%

Dissatisfaction Theory

Mandelkern

2016

SALT

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“…What underlies the textbook explanation are two assumptions that are widely shared in the literature. Both of them appeal to the notion of the common ground, which intuitively keeps track of what is taken for granted in discourse and, following Stalnaker (2002), can be made more precise thus:…”

Section: The Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While this presupposition can be accommodated, this is not so if it is common ground that Bob does not have children, as (6) indicates. But now observe that whenever φ is not compatible with the common ground, it is common ground that φ is not compatible with the common ground (remember Stalnaker's (2002) definition of the common ground). So it is not straightforward to see how a presupposition that φ is compatible with the common ground could be accommodated without fuss if ¬φ is already common ground.…”

Section: Accommodationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons from Sobel sequences

Willer

2017

Semantics and Pragmatics

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“…In other words, focus encodes assumptions about what the speaker considers to be shared knowledge between him and the listener(s), i.e., it encodes an assumption about the common ground (Stalnaker, 1978(Stalnaker, , 2002. The common ground is often modeled as a set of possible worlds, the context set C. If true, this is a potential difference to giveness-marking, since for the purposes of givenness-marking it seems to be sufficient that a discourse referent or linguistic material is salient in the discourse context, but no particular assumptions about the truth of any proposition seems necessary.…”

Section: Linguistic Antecedence Vs Presupposed Truthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Focus and givenness: a unified approach

Wagner¹

2012

Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure

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Theories about information structure differ in treating focus-, contrast-, and givenness-marking as either a single phenomenon or as distinct phenomena. This paper argues for a unified approach, following the lead of Schwarzschild (1999), but a unified approach based on local alternatives (Wagner, 2005(Wagner, , 2006b. 1 The basic insights of the local alternatives approach are captured using a new formalization, which aims to fix several problems in the original proposal noted in Büring (2008). The unified approach is compared with alternative approaches that invoke separate mechanisms for givenness and focus: the disanaphora approach (Williams, 1997), the F-Projection account (Selkirk, 1984(Selkirk, , 1995, and the reference set approach in Szendröi (2001) and Reinhart (2006). All of these have fundamental problems, and the requisite revisions render them equivalent to the local alternatives approach.

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Common Ground

Cited by 964 publications

References 7 publications

Dissatisfaction Theory

Dissatisfaction Theory

Lessons from Sobel sequences

Focus and givenness: a unified approach

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