Preconditions and Projection: Explaining Non-Anaphoric Presupposition #
@cite{roberts-simons-2024}
Roberts, C. & Simons, M. (2024). Preconditions and projection: Explaining non-anaphoric presupposition. Linguistics and Philosophy 47(4):703–748.
Key Claims #
The projective contents of CoS predicates, factives, and selectional restrictions are entailments characterizing ontological preconditions of the associated event type — NOT semantically encoded presuppositions.
Projection is a pragmatic default: a speaker who raises an event is taken to assume its preconditions hold (maximizes informativity, per @cite{qing-goodman-lassiter-2016} and @cite{warstadt-2022}).
Differential suppression across verb pairs (know/discover, stop/continue) follows from lexical semantic differences (telicity, aspect, CoS status), not from different presupposition "strengths."
Filtering in Karttunen environments (conjunction, conditional, disjunction) is explained pragmatically without anaphoric constraints. For disjunction, the account predicts symmetric filtering (contra @cite{heim-1983}).
Connection to Existing Theory #
This study file imports and bridges:
OntologicalPreconditions(EventPhase, entailment classification)ChangeOfState.Theory(CoS presuppositions)LexicalAspect(Vendler classes, telicity)ProjectiveContent(Tonhauser taxonomy: all three verb classes are Class C)Diagnostics(empirical diagnostic data)
The theory predicts the empirical pattern: preconditions project, consequences don't. Verified against diagnostic data.
Diagnostic data confirms: prior state passes "allows for", projects. Result state fails "allows for", doesn't project.
Know is atelic: precondition = consequence (stative, no change).
Both share factivity: complement truth is a precondition.
Discover has an additional precondition (ignorance) that know lacks. This is the source of differential suppression: the ignorance precondition creates a context in which the speaker signals uncertainty about C.
Stop is telic: involves a state change.
Continue is atelic: no state change.
Stop and continue share the same precondition (prior activity P).
But they differ in telicity: stop is telic, continue is atelic.
Selectional preconditions project through negation. "The robot didn't kick the tree" still implies it has feet.
In a conjunction "P, and (stop P)", the first conjunct asserts the precondition. R&S: it is pragmatically implausible that the speaker presumes the precondition — they are explicitly asserting it.
Equations
- One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.
Instances For
In a conditional "If P, then stop P", the antecedent supposes P. R&S: the conditional structure itself signals the speaker's lack of commitment to the antecedent, and the function of the conditional is to evaluate the consequent relative to the antecedent. No global presumption of P is pragmatically attributable.
Equations
Instances For
R&S's distinctive prediction for disjunction (@cite{roberts-simons-2024} §4): filtering in disjunction is symmetric for non-anaphoric triggers.
"Either Jane never smoked, or she's stopped." (43)
The first disjunct (¬P) creates a context in which it is reasonable to consider the second disjunct's precondition (P) as locally entailed (if ¬P is false, i.e. P is true). Crucially, R&S argue this filtering works identically in both orders — contra @cite{heim-1983}'s asymmetric account.
This is a pragmatic consequence of their view: filtering depends on whether global presumption of the precondition is pragmatically attributable, not on dynamic left-to-right context update.
Instances For
For CoS verbs, EventPhase.precondition agrees with PrProp.presup. This shows the two representations — the aboutness-based (R&S) and the trivalent (Heim) — agree on what projects, even though they disagree on why it projects.
R&S argue that presupposition status follows from event structure,
not from a stipulated presupType. A verb presupposes its complement
iff it has factivity or CoS event structure. The derivedPresupType
accessor on VerbCore implements this derivation.
Suppression does not change what is entailed — only what is presumed.
End-to-end: for "stop P", the full chain from event structure to projection prediction. The precondition (prior state P) is invariant across both polarities, while the consequence (¬P) flips.
End-to-end for factives: know's complement truth is an ontological precondition, shares the same structural projection mechanism as CoS verbs, and agrees with the PrProp representation.
End-to-end for selectional restrictions: same aboutness mechanism, same projection behavior, same structural explanation.