Chapter 1
Pragmatic strategies
Rob van der Sandt
University of Nijmegen
[email protected]
1.1
Introduction
In the seventies Gerald Gazdar developed a theory of formal pragmatics the core of which
was his theory of presupposition projection.1,2 Though Gazdar’s theory covered a wide
range of data and though, at its time, it was vastly superior over competing theories,
its further development was hampered by some serious problems. One problem was the
counterintuitive notion of presupposition which did not capture the intuitive view of presupposition as being information which is in some sense given or taken for granted in a
discourse. A concomitant problem was his account of cancellation which was widely felt
to be conceptually incoherent. In Gazdar’s view conversational implicatures constitute a
stronger kind of information than presupposition: presuppositional information may be
defeated by implicatures. This is at odds with our pretheoretical notion of presupposition
and conflicts with the standard way this notion is characterized. Intuitively, if a sentence
is felt to be presupposing, the presuppositional information is (in some sense to be made
explicit) required for its utterance to be interpretable. The standard characterization of
conversational implicatures is a very different one. On the Gricean view a conversational
implicature is not a semantic requirement for interpretation, but instead an inference that
is computed on the basis of the interpretation of a sentence, contextual information and
conversational principles. The question then immediately arises how such inferences, which
are for their existence dependent on a previous interpretation of the utterance that invokes
them, can possibly defeat information which should already be part of the linguistic or
non-linguistic context for the inducing sentence to have an interpretation. This problem is
the more pressing since the received view tells us that conversational implicatures are the
paradigm cases of defeasible inferences. Thus, if there is any direct interaction between
presupposition and conversational implicature, one would expect the former to override
1
I would like to thank Bart Geurts, Emar Maier, Jennifer Spenader and the participants of the Kamp
workshop on Presupposition for their helpful comments.
2
Gazdar (1979), the published version, is a revision of his 1976 thesis which was completed under the
supervision of Hans Kamp.
1
2
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
the latter and not the other way around.
Gazdar’s theory has a dynamic flavour. However, his dynamics is found only at the level
of sentential discourse processing and does not extend to the interpretation of subsentential
constituents. Moreover, presuppositional information is only computed and incremented in
the subsequent context after the propositional content has been computed and incremented.
Current theories that are based on dynamic frameworks deviate in exactly this respect
and give a very different picture of how presuppositions are evoked and resolved in a
context. In contrast to the Gazdarian picture they agree with Frege and Strawson that
presuppositions are requirements for the interpretation of an utterance, they agree with
Stalnaker and Karttunen that presuppositional information is information that is some
sense contextually given or taken for granted in a conversation. They agree with Lewis
that this information may not always be explicitly given in the context of utterance, but
may be reconstructed, and they thus hold that the felicity of a presupposing sentence may
be established by a process of accommodation. On current dynamic assumptions this means
that accommodation is not simply a side product of contextual update, which only affects
the output context, but should instead be reconstructed as an operation on input contexts
so as to enable an utterance to be processed even if the original context didn’t admit it.
And, finally, there is by now a consensus that an adequate account of presupposition and
presupposition projection is to be construed as a hybrid theory in which semantic and
pragmatic principles interact. Existing views mainly differ with respect to the question
what exactly counts as contextual requirements for the interpretation of presupposing
sentences. They differ moreover in their views on the type of mechanism and the status of
the principles that govern accommodation. Heim, Beaver and other satisfaction theorists
basically require that the context of utterance entails the presuppositional information. 3
Current anaphoric accounts view presuppositions as identifiable objects that should find
some other identifiable object to serve as an antecedent for the presuppositional expression. 4
And the latter are closer to the theory of Gazdar in accommodating this object in case it
is not already there.5
In retrospect we may point to two major characteristics of Gazdar’s system that divorce his methodology from current theories, and that prevented analysts to develop his
account into a more adequate and conceptually appealing theory of presupposition. The
first characteristic to blame is what I will call his preKampian dynamism, the second his
very unKampian view on the division of labour between semantics and pragmatics.6 These
two problems are related. Gazdar’s system is confined to presupposition computation on a
propositional level. In his simple model of discourse incrementation the dynamics does not
extend below the level of full sentences, which means that it cannot handle quantificational
and anaphoric links beyond the sentence boundaries. As a consequence, presupposition,
content and implicature expressions are incremented separately as entities in their own
right. Presuppositional or other pragmatic information will thus never enter into binding
3
The satisfaction account originates in the work of Karttunen (1974) and Stalnaker (1974). See for
developments in a dynamic framework in particular Heim (1983) and Beaver (1997, 2001).
4
See e.g. Van der Sandt (1992), Geurts (1995, 1999), Sæbø (1996), Krahmer (1998), Asher & Lascarides
(1998), Bos (1999), Kamp (2001). See Zeevat (1992) for a hybrid account which incorporates ideas from
both worlds
5
See Geurts (1996) and Beaver (1997) for two different assessments of the state of the art.
6
See Kamp (1979) for a criticism of the classic division of labour between semantics and pragmatics
which antedates DRT two years.
1.2. GAZDAR’S DYNAMICS
3
relations with the semantic content of a sentence. Nor is presupposition treated in the
Fregean way as a definedness condition of the presupposing sentence. Instead presupposition is treated as a purely pragmatic phenomenon which does not contribute to the semantic
content of an utterance and thus cannot serve as a requirement for the interpretation of
the inducing sentence.
The first problem, which has become known as the binding problem, can only be solved
when we adopt DRT or some other theory of dynamic interpretation. I will briefly comment
on this issue in the next section and refer the reader to the extensive literature on dynamic
treatments of presupposition that turned up in the nineties. The second problem, the
interaction between pragmatic inferencing and semantic interpretation, will be discussed
when I turn to a discussion and reevaluation of Gazdar’s system (in particular section 1.5).
I will then put forward some tentative remarks on the relation between presupposition and
questions in discourse.
The general setup of the paper is as follows. I will first show that even when we
restrict ourselves to Gazdar’s conceptual frame, some oddities of his system can easily be
remedied. This will set the stage for a reinterpretation of the major feature which governs
the behaviour of presuppositions in his system: the interaction between presuppositions
and his clausal implicatures. I will claim that these ‘implicatures’ should not be seen as
ordinary Gricean implicatures, but should instead be seen as constraints on the incoming
context. In fact they can be reinterpreted as ‘issues’ or ‘questions’ in discourse. And, more
importantly, I will point out that it is exactly the possibility of such a reinterpretation which
explains why his original clausals did the work they were devised for. I will finally show
how such a reinterpretation, when implemented in current dynamic treatments, may give
a new view on certain accommodation effects as giving rise to a special kind of bridging
inference. I will illustrate this by means of a simple solution to a well-known problem
involved in the analysis of disjunctive sentences.
1.2
Gazdar’s dynamics
Gazdar’s account is formulated in an incremental model of discourse processing in which
each utterance changes the incoming context by adding the information conveyed to the
next context.7 As I pointed out in the previous section Gazdar’s dynamics does not extend
below the sentence level and is not applicable when presuppositions and implicatures enter
into binding relations with quantified expressions. Gazdar’s presuppositions and implicatures act as entities in their own right, but they may, in view of their content, constrain
the incrementation process of subsequent utterances.
Utterances are construed as context-sentence pairs.8 A discourse is an ordered sequence
7
See Gazdar (1979) for the full exposition of his theory. Many detailed expositions are found in the
literature. See e.g. Soames (1982), Levinson (1983) , Van der Sandt (1988), Beaver (1997, 2001).
8
Actually Gazdar construes them as indexed pairs of contexts and propositions, where the context is
taken to be a set of propositions. Since one would like to conceive of ‘I am hungry’ said by me to you
and ‘You are hungry’ said by you to me as different utterances expressing the same proposition, I will
take utterances as pairs of sentences and contexts where the context contains the parameters needed to
determine the proposition expressed, enriched with an information set which plays the role of Stalnaker’s
context set. This has no consequences for the discussion but simplifies the formulation of Gazdar’s system.
Since Gazdar’s system is limited to modal propositional logic I will often use ‘context’ to refer to this
information set.
4
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
of utterances. The contextual information accumulated at a certain stage of a discourse is a
set of propositions, which comprises all the information conveyed up to that point and thus
includes the contribution of the implicatures and presuppositions. Such an information set
is interpreted as a commitment slate in the sense of Hamblin.9 After the utterance of a
sentence the speaker is thus not just committed to the truth-conditional content of his utterance, but also to all further information that has been conveyed by non-truth-conditional
means. The latter comprises in Gazdar’s theory not only implicatural information but also
the presuppositional contribution.
In order to allow for the contextual defeasibility of presuppositions and implicatures
Gazdar distinguishes between potential presuppositions (pre-suppositions in Gazdar’s terminology or proto-presuppositions as I will call them) and the actual presuppositions of
a sentence in a discourse. Similarly there is a distinction between potential implicatures
(im-plicatures or proto-implicatures) and the actual implicatures conveyed by the utterance of a sentence. Both proto-implicatures and proto-presuppositions are generated in
a purely mechanical way. Proto-presuppositions are read off from presuppositional constructions such as definite NP’s, factive verbs, verbs of change and other items that are
standardly taken to be presupposition inducers. They are given by the lexicon and the
syntax of the language under consideration. These are the entities that may in the course of
the incrementation process emerge as the actual presuppositions of an utterance. Whether
they do so, will depend on the information contained in the context at the moment of
incrementation. The actual presuppositions of an utterance will thus always be a subset
of the set of proto-presuppositions.
Contextual incrementation is based on a hierarchical ordering of semantic content,
proto-implicatures and proto-presuppositions, and is constrained by the requirement of
consistency. Given a context, the proposition expressed by a sentence in this context,
and given a previous determination of the proto-implicatures and proto-presuppositions
of this sentence, contextual incrementation proceeds in three stages. We first create an
auxiliary context by adding the proposition expressed to the already established contextual
information. This yields a context which consist of the union of the old context with
the truth conditional content of the sentence. In the next stage we add those consistent
sets of proto-implicatures which retain consistency with the already established set of
propositions, thus again establishing a new context which comprises both the content and
the implicatures associated with this sentence. Finally we add those consistent sets of
proto-presuppositions which are consistent with the set established by the incorporation of
the implicatures. Only those proto-implicatures and proto-presuppositions which don’t give
rise to contradictions in this staged process are thus established as the actual implicatures
and presuppositions of an utterance. This ordered process eliminates inter alia all protoimplicatures which are inconsistent with the propositional content, contextual information
or each other. It also eliminates all proto-presuppositions which are incompatible with the
set resulting from the incorporation of the implicatures or which are inconsistent with one
another. Only those proto-implicatures and proto-presuppositions which are added to the
next context are taken to be the actual implicatures and presuppositions of the sentence
processed. Figure 1 gives a pictorial representation of the incrementation procedure as
Gazdar conceives it.
The following examples may illustrate the idea behind this general setup:
9
See Hamblin (1971).
5
1.2. GAZDAR’S DYNAMICS
hϕ, c0 i
hχ, c0 i
sem. impl. pres.
c00
c0
c000
c000
0 = c1
hψ, c0 i
sem.impl. pres.
c01
c001
c000
1 = c2
sem.impl.pres.
c02
c002
c000
2
ordered incrementation
Figure 1: Discourse
(1)
a.
b.
Either John does not own a donkey or he keeps his donkey very quiet.
Either John has an insulated stable, or he keeps his donkey very quiet.
The first disjunct of (1a) invokes inter alia the proto-implicature that for all the speaker
knows John may not have a donkey. This proto-implicature is consistent with the content
of (1a). It will thus be incremented in the next context and be established as an actual implicature of an utterance of (1a). We then consider the contribution of the presuppositions
in the context that has thus been established by the incorporation of the implicature. The
second disjunct induces the proto-presupposition that John has a donkey. The assumption that John has a donkey conflicts with the information that has been established by
adding the implicature that he may not have a donkey and is thus defeated.10 The protopresupposition will thus not be inherited which correctly predicts that an utterance (1a)
does not presuppose that John owns a donkey. In (1b) we observe a different situation. Due
to the fact that the first disjunct of (1b) is logically independent of the proto-presupposition
no conflicting implicature will be invoked in this case (the proto-implicatures that for all
the speaker knows John’s stable may or may not be insulated, are compatible with the
assumption that he has a donkey). Hence the proto-presupposition will be inherited by
the next context and thus be established as an actual presupposition of the utterance.
Gazdar’s system captures the fact that survival of pragmatic information depends on
the context of utterance. It, moreover, correctly construes presupposition not as a property
of the inducing sentence, but of its utterance in a context. However, in line with nearly all
other theorists at his time he assumes semantic and pragmatic information are two different types of content that are computed and represented separately and will only be merged
afterwards in a more substantial proposition.11 On this view it is this more informative
propositional object which encodes the full message conveyed. Given a pragmatic view of
presupposition this implies that we should be able to determine the proposition expressed
by a sentence independently of the contribution of the presuppositional information. This
has some unfortunate consequences. It yields a counterintuitive notion of propositional
content and, even worse, gives rise to binding problems when presuppositions and implicatures entertain anaphoric relations with external antecedents. To illustrate the point let
us have a look at (2):
10
‘Conflicts’ in an intuitive sense. Logically there is no contradiction. See section 1.3.
Karttunen and Peters (1979) (though not Karttunen (1974)) is a particularly striking example. It
should be mentioned that Stalnaker’s work (1974, 1978), is an exception, though the Stalnaker inspired
theory of Van der Sandt (1988) and the general criticism of the standard view in Van der Sandt (1992)
may wrongly suggest the opposite.
11
6
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
(2)
The mayor opened the exhibition.
Splitting up the presuppositional and content-contribution we obtain (3a) and (3b) for the
presuppositional information and the content respectively
(3)
a.
b.
∃x∀y[mayor(x) ↔ x = y]
∃x∀y[[mayor(x) ↔ x = y] ∧ open exhibition(x)]
that is, we are forced to encode the information that there is a mayor twice, once as part of
the content expression and once as part of the presuppositional contribution. This captures
the observation that presuppositional inferences of non-embedded sentences are preserved
as an entailment of their inducing sentence. It also captures the fact that this information
contributes to the proposition expressed when part of a complex structure. But note that
the reason is not that ‘the presupposition’ is entailed by the subsentence that invokes
it, as some pragmatic analyst have claimed. It only happens because the presuppositional
information is encoded twice, once as part of the content expression and once as a defeasible
proto-presupposition. It is the non-presuppositional content part that is preserved as a nondefeasible entailment. It is thus misleading to say that presuppositions cannot be defeated
in entailing environments. For even if the proto-presupposition is defeated or neutralized,
its non-presuppositional counterpart in the content expression will still do its semantic
duty. There is thus no principled reason why Gazdar’s system cannot be redefined in such
a way that the presupposition is defeated in such environments though the inference to
the purportedly presuppositional information goes through. The redundant encoding is
nevertheless wrong for both technical and empirical reasons. Firstly, it does not capture
the fact that the non-presuppositional information conveyed by (2) is not that there is a
mayor who opened the exhibition, but that its utterance contributes to a context which
should already provide a mayor and conveys there that he opened the exhibition. This
means that the non-presuppositional contribution should be given by an open sentence
that has to link up to the established presuppositional information. The procedure thus
assumes a counterintuitive notion of propositional content. It moreover yields the wrong
truth-conditions when we consider non-extensional embeddings. Consider (4a) and note
that its utterance would normally presuppose that there is a mayor i.e. (4b) and convey
(4c), that is the scalar implicature that it is not necessary that he opened the exhibition:
(4)
a.
b.
c.
It is possible that the mayor opened the exhibition.
There is a mayor.
It is not necessary that the mayor opened the exhibition.
When we encode the contribution of the presuppositional, content and implicature expressions separately, sentence (4a) is predicted to convey that there is a (unique) mayor in this
world, that there is a (possibly) different one in the world where the exhibition was opened,
and furthermore, by way of scalar implicature, that it does not hold for every world that
there is a mayor who opened the exhibition. This is wrong and typical for all other theories
that adhere to a strict division of labour between the semantic and pragmatic component.12
A proper analysis should rather run along the lines of (5) and be analysed as sketched
in Figure (5):
12
This also includes Van der Sandt’s (1988), though not his (1992) account.
1.3. EPISTEMIC MODIFICATION
(5)
a.
b.
7
There is a mayor . . .
it is possible . . .
but not necessary that he opened the exhibition
∃x mayor(x) . . .
♦ open exhibition(x) . . .
¬ open exhibition(x) . . .
SEMANTIC CONTENT
∃x mayor(x)
♦ open exhibition(x) ¬ open exhibition(x)
(presupposed info
(assertoric contribution
(implicatural info
contextually required)
dependent on the
computed on the basis
presuppositional
of contextual info
requirements)
+ content)
ACCOMMODATION
INCREMENTATION
i.e. adjustment of the
i.e. mapping of the adjusted
context of utterance
context into the next one
Figure 2: Types of information
We thus perceive an anaphoric process where the presuppositional expression should bind a
variable in the (open) content expression and where the implicature is in turn anaphorically
dependent on both the presuppositional and the content expression. The content thus
depends on the presuppositional expression and takes priority over the implicature. This
picture effectively reverses the order postulated by Gazdar.13
Gazdar’s theory is based on a standard static semantics. A solution of the binding
problem had to wait until Kamp (1981) and Heim (1982) presented their versions of dynamic semantics, recaptured meanings as relations between input and output contexts and
showed how to treat anaphoricity inter- and intrasententially in a uniform way. Various
proposals are found in the presupposition literature since then. I contend that the same
development allows us to remove a second obstacle from Gazdar’s theory, the counterintuitive and conceptually incoherent thesis that the contribution of implicatures takes priority
over the computation of presuppositions. But in order to do so I first have to discuss another feature of his theory that has been objected to by a variety of authors, the intuitively
unreasonably strong epistemic modification of presuppositional, content and implicature
expressions.
1.3
Epistemic modification
In the previous section I gave an informal sketch of Gazdar’s method of contextual incrementation as a kind of default inheritance mechanism. The basic constraint on update
is consistency. Only consistent subsets of information are inherited by the next context.
However, in many cases intuitively conflicting information does not formally give rise to
inconsistency between different types of pragmatic and semantic information. In order to
13
See Geurts and Maier (ms.) for an extension of DRT which allows us to represent and interpret various
kinds of semantic and pragmatic information in a unified framework.
8
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
obtain inconsistency Gazdar takes recourse to a strong modal modification of the relevant
expressions.
The two modal operators figuring in Gazdar’s system are the K- and the P-operator of
Hintikka’s (1962) epistemic logic. Ka ϕ is to be read as ‘a knows that ϕ’ and Pϕ as ‘it is
possible, for all that a knows that ϕ’. These are the epistemic variants of the well-known
necessity and possibility operators of standard modal logic and are thus interdefinable in
one another:
Pa ϕ := ¬Ka ¬ϕ
Gazdar limits himself to monologue. Hence he only needs indices for one speaker which may
thus safely be skipped. And though his proofs are cast in terms of Hintikka’s epistemic logic,
the modalities may be interpreted by normal Kripke semantics. The K- and P-operators
may be interpreted as the box and the diamond respectively. If we assume reflexivity and
transitivity for the accessibility relation the system semantically corresponds to KT4. A
central property of knowledge is that anything that is known by someone is true. Reflexivity
guarantees the validity of the scheme Kϕ → ϕ and thus that knowledge entails truth. A
second property which will turn out to be crucial is positive introspection: if one knows
something one knows that one knows that. Transitivity guarantees just that by validating
the scheme Kϕ → KKϕ. We may add two further operators, B and C for belief. These
‘doxastic’ operators are interdefinable just as their epistemic counterparts. Bϕ is to be read
as the speaker believes that ϕ. And Cϕ means that it is compatible with the speaker’s
beliefs that ϕ. This weaker notion should not obey Bϕ → ϕ as there are false beliefs.
It should however respect Bϕ → Cϕ (beliefs are consistent). We obtain this by skipping
reflexivity and requiring just transitivity and seriality for belief.
According to Gazdar the assertoric utterance of a sentence ϕ commits the speaker to
knowing that ϕ under Grice’s maxim of Quality. It is this commitment which gives rise to
a so-called Quality implicature of the form Kϕ. Thus by the utterance of
(6)
The cat is on the mat.
the speaker does not just commit himself to the cat being on the mat, but to knowing
that this is the case. This is too strong. Surely by an assertoric utterance of ϕ, a speaker
commits himself to its truth, cannot admit disbelief in his statement and, when asked
for further justification, he may back up his claim by saying that he knows (or believes)
it is true. That is, by the assertoric use of ϕ a speaker is committed to act as if ϕ is
true, but by his utterance he is neither saying nor implicating that he knows (or believes)
that ϕ. His commitment is a consequence of uttering this sentence with assertoric force,
but it is not part of the presuppositional, propositional or implicatural information and
should be handled at a meta level. Speaker commitment is already captured by Gazdar by
interpreting a context as a commitment slate and thus is already taken care of and handled
as a fact about the context. Hence the epistemic commitment of the speaker to the truth
of what he says need not be encoded by adding knowledge claims to the information set
that is taken to be his set of commitments.
Note that Grice already objected to construing epistemic commitment as some kind of
quality implicature.
1.3. EPISTEMIC MODIFICATION
9
On my account, it will not be true that when I say that p, I conversationally
implicate that I believe that p; for to suppose that I believe that p [...] is just to
suppose that I am observing the first maxim of Quality [. . . ] it is not a natural
use of language to describe one who has said that p as having, for example,
‘implied,’ ‘indicated,’ or ‘suggested’ that he believes that p.
Grice (1989: 42 )
Proto-presuppositions are likewise modalized with the K-operator. The proto-presupposition
Gazdar takes to be induced by (2) is not that there is a mayor but the stronger expression that the speaker knows that there is a mayor. A typical utterance of (2) will thus
presuppose:
(7)
K[there is a mayor]
The remarks just made with respect to the epistemic modification of assertoric utterances
apply here as well. When a speaker indicates that he presupposes that there is a mayor,
he commits himself to the truth of what he presupposes, but just as in the case of plain
assertions this is accounted for by interpreting a context as a commitment slate. There is
thus no need to enter the description of a consequence of this commitment to the context.
Gazdarian implicatures derive from the maxim of Quantity and come in two varieties:
clausals and scalars. Clausal implicatures are read off from the clauses of compound sentences. Given a compound sentence ϕ the mechanism yields for each non-entailed and
non-presuppositionally induced subsentence χ a set proto-implicatures Pχ and P¬χ. For
a disjunction of the form χ ∨ ψ this yields {Pχ, P ¬χ, Pψ, P¬ψ}. The proto-implicatures of
(1a) thus comprise P[John has a donkey] and P¬[John has a donkey]. Hence, by the
utterance of this sentence the speaker will typically implicate that for all he knows it is
possible that John has a donkey and that for all he knows it is possible that John does
not have a donkey, which might also be paraphrased more concisely as the speaker does
not know whether John has a donkey. The informal explanation is that by the utterance
of a disjunction the speaker implicates that he does not take the truth of either disjunct
for granted. For if he had known that either disjunct were true, he would have been in the
position to make a much stronger statement. If he had known that John didn’t have a donkey, he should have said so directly, thereby producing a more informative statement. If he
had known that John had one, the plain assertion of the second disjunct would have been
shorter and more informative than the full disjunction. In both cases he would have been
required to choose the alternative expression by the maxim of Quantity. The implicature
for the second disjunct is derived analogously. The hearer will thus conclude that since the
speaker asserted only the weaker statement, he was not taking the truth of either disjunct
for granted and thus conversationally implicated that he didn’t know whether John had
a donkey or whether he kept his animal quiet. Clausals thus capture the suggestions of
epistemic uncertainty that typically go with the utterance of disjunctions, conditionals and
epistemic possibility. I will argue in the next section that this inference should not be seen
as a standard Gricean implicature and, moreover, that if it is properly construed, we don’t
need epistemic qualification in the Gazdarian way.14
14
It should be remarked though that Gazdar’s definition overgenerates. This holds in particular for
those implications that are read off from the complements of verbs of propositional attitude. For example,
Gazdar’s definition associates with (i) the set of proto-clausals (ii):
10
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
The second variety of implicatures found in Gazdar are scalars. These are derived
from quantitative scales in the sense of Horn (1972). Such scales are ordered n-tuples of
expression alternatives the form hα1 , α2 , . . . , αn i, where each αi is a linguistic expression of
a similar type. Given such a scale a sentence ϕ containing a weaker expression will invoke
the implicature that the corresponding inference containing a stronger expression from the
same scale does not hold. So given a the scale hall, most, many, some, . . .i the utterance of
(8a) will implicate that not all of the children were in the garden. Such scalars normally
come unmodalized. In Gazdar’s system they come modalized in a very strong way. The
proto-implicature assigned to (8a) is (8c). By a typical utterance of (8a) the speaker is
thus not said to implicate that not all of the children were in the garden, but that he knows
that not all of the children were in the garden.
(8)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Some of the children were in the garden.
All of the children were in the garden.
K¬[all of the children were in the garden]
¬K[all of the children were in the garden]
¬[all of the children were in the garden]
This modification has generally be felt to be unreasonably strong and has been objected to
by a number of authors. Soames (1982), Van der Sandt (1988) and Horn (1989) all suggest
that, if epistemic force is assigned, it should rather look like ¬Kϕ instead of K¬ϕ. For even
if we grant that a co-operative speaker will not utter (8a) when he knows that (8b) is true,
it does not follow that (8a) can only be uttered co-operatively when the speaker knows
that (8b) is false. It is perfectly acceptable for the speaker to utter (8a), when he does not
have information about the truth-value of (8b). Under normal circumstances a hearer will
conclude from an utterance of (8a) that the speaker does not know whether all children are
in the garden—not that the speaker knows that not all children were in the garden. The
hearer will draw the latter conclusion only if he assumes that the speaker has complete
information about the situation at hand. If this does not obtain, (8c) is too strong. The
inference from (8d) to (8c) thus comes about as a result of the extra assumption that
the speaker is well-informed about the truth-value of the corresponding statements which
contain a higher ranking expression from the relevant scale.
Hirschberg (1991: 75-79) and Levinson (2000: 77-79) suggest a weaker epistemic modification in terms of the belief thus distinguishing between the epistemic commitments that
come about as a result from the speaker’s commitments in view of what is asserted versus
the commitments that arise from what he is merely implicating. In my view this strategy
is misguided and based on a confusion between different levels of interpretation. Here I
concur with Atlas as reported in Levinson (2000: 78). Just as in the case of presuppositional and assertoric information, the epistemic state of the agent should not be encoded as
part of the content of his utterance or of whatever is conveyed by his utterance. Standard
Gricean reasoning supports this view. When a speaker utters (8a) although he is in a
(i) John hopes that he has won the prize.
(ii) {P[John has won the prize], P¬[John has won the prize]}
These proto-clausals will survive a typical utterance of (i) unless the context provides information to the
contrary. However, intuitively these environments do not give rise to the inference that the speaker does
not know whether he won the prize. This is easily remedied by excluding verbs of propositional attitude
from the contexts that generate such clausals.
1.4. ELIMINATING EPISTEMIC MODIFIERS
11
position to utter the logically stronger (8b), he violates the maxim of Quantity. The fact
that a speaker utters (8a) thus suggests—in light of the maxim of Quality ‘Say nothing
for which you don’t have adequate evidence’—that the speaker does not have complete
information about the number of children being in the garden, and therefore avoids saying
more than he knows. Only if the hearer knows that the speaker has full information in this
respect, can he conclude that the speaker has chosen a logically weaker expression in order
to avoid a conflict with the submaxim ‘Don’t say what you believe to be false’. Thus it
is only under those circumstances that he can infer (8c) The inference on the part of the
hearer that the speaker does not know, believe or whatever, comes about as a result of a
reasoning process which involves inferences about the knowledge, beliefs and intentions of
the speaker. These inferences as to the epistemic status of the speaker should however not
be made part of the content of what he conveys.
1.4
Eliminating epistemic modifiers
In the previous section I argued that the encoding of various degrees of epistemic commitment on the part of the speaker in the presuppositional, content and implicature expressions
is based on a confusion between what features of interpretation should be handled at the
level of speech act theory, what should be handled by the dynamics of discourse interpretation and what at the level of content. And even when interpreted at a metalevel the
epistemic force of knowing seems too strong. Nor does such a modification capture the
differences between presuppositional, assertoric and various kinds of implicatural information.
When we have a closer look at the system, we see that the derivation of strong presuppositions, strongly modalized assertions and implicatures is an artifact of the system which
for its empirical predictions depends crucially on two factors, (i) the hierarchical ordering
of semantic content, proto-implicatures and proto-presuppositions and (ii) the requirement
of consistency for the contextual update. Let us run though the example given before:
(9)
a.
b.
c.
Either John does not own a donkey or he keeps his donkey very quiet.
K[John has a donkey]
P[John has a donkey], P¬[John has a donkey]
The occurrence of John’s donkey in the second disjunct of (9a) induces the proto-presupposition (9b). And, since the first disjunct is neither entailed nor (proto-)presupposed,
this clause generates the proto-implicatures given in (9c). Contextual incrementation now
proceeds as follows. Assuming that the initial context is empty, K(9a) will be entered
into an auxiliary context, thus establishing the input context for the incrementation of
the implicatural and presuppositional information. Since the proto-clausals are consistent
with the context just created, this context will be updated by this information thus establishing the proto-clausals as actual clausals of the utterance. The resulting context is the
input for the proto-presupposition. The latter won’t survive the incrementation procedure
though, since the context established by now comprises P¬[John has a donkey] which
is inconsistent with K[John has a donkey]. The context resulting from this ordered incrementation procedure will thus comprise the (modalized) content of the sentence, the
clausals, but not the proto-presupposition. The presupposition is said to be cancelled.
12
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
Note that this cancellation process depends both on the epistemic modification of the presuppositional material and on the order of incrementation. For, if the proto-presupposition
were not modalized, it would wrongly survive, since the set {P¬[John has a donkey],
[John has a donkey]} is consistent. If we would retain the modalization of the protopresupposition but would switch the ordering around, i.e. if we would first increment
the proto-presupposition and then the implicatural information, the proto-presupposition
would equally survive, but now cancel the proto-implicature since the set {P¬ [John has
a donkey], K[John has a donkey]} is inconsistent. This would wrongly predict that
(9a) presupposes (9b) and does not give rise to the inference that the speaker does not
know whether John has a donkey. The general setup of the system thus requires both a
modalizing of the proto-presupposition and the stipulation that implicatural information
is stronger than presuppositional information.
I first give a solution to the problem of strong presuppositions and assertions and
discuss the ordering of presuppositional and implicatural information in the next section.
A simple solution to the first problem is obtained by simultaneously strengthening the
consistency requirement for contextual update to the requirement of doxastic defensibility,
and eliminating the epistemic modalization of proto-presupposition and assertoric update.
For a similar account I refer to Beaver (2001: 65-7).15
I noted above that the epistemic commitments need not be encoded as beliefs or knowledge of the speaker. Commitments are social consequences that derive from the utterances
a speaker actually produces. They may be reinforced, withdrawn, a speaker may stick to
his commitments or violate them. It is the utterances a speaker produces that give rise to
his commitments and this may be accounted for by entering the content of his utterances in
a set which we then interpret as his commitment slate. Such a commitment slate can best
be seen as an ‘edited summary of a dialogue’s preceding history’ Hamblin (1987: 229) and
is close to Lewis’ (1979) notion of a conversational scoreboard. The fact that the information conveyed is part of such a commitment slate will subsequently put the speaker under
a variety of obligations many of which are dictated by the Gricean maxims. He should be
prepared to defend his claims, not redundantly repeat information etc. The basic point
is that the fact that this information is part of his commitment slate will put him under
certain obligations. His commitment slate thus should represent the content of what he
is committed to, but not contain the description of his commitments. This is roughly the
way in which Hamblin introduced the notion. It follows that the content of what a speaker
conveys by making assertoric utterances will be entered as a part of the context, but that
the effect of his being committed to knowing or believing what he says should be handled
on a different level. Such an interpretation is in line with the framework for speech act
theory Gazdar proposes elsewhere (Gazdar 1981). Here speech acts are essentially viewed
as instructions to change the context. An assertion, for example, will change a context in
which the speaker is not committed to the truth of ϕ to one in which he is so committed.
This is close to Stalnaker (1978) where we also perceive a principled division between the
content of what is conveyed and the various effects this gives rise to.
15
Beaver (2001) proposes to change the definition of consistency to
Cons(X) iff {Kϕ | ϕ ∈ X} 6 ⊥
This comes down to requiring epistemic defensibility and yields the same results as presented here. It
is shown below that we may dispense with the K-operator altogether since doxastic defensibility already
captures Gazdar’s data.
1.4. ELIMINATING EPISTEMIC MODIFIERS
13
Gazdar (1979: 47) motivates the epistemic modalization of assertoric utterances by
an appeal to Hintikka’s discussion of Moore’s paradox. Moore noted the oddity of the
following statement.
(10)
The cat is on the mat, but I don’t believe it.
Clearly, what is expressed by this sentence is consistent. A speaker may say that the cat is
on the mat without believing it. However, on no occasion of use his utterance of (10) will
be felicitous. Hintikka explains the oddity by pointing out that a speaker is expected to
believe or at least to be in a position to conceivably believe what he says. This presumption
is violated in (10). In Gricean terms: by an utterance of (10) the speaker infringes the
maxim of Quality. Hintikka’s explanation runs as follows. Though (11a) is consistent (11b)
can be shown to be inconsistent, which means that (11a) is necessarily unbelievable.
(11)
a.
b.
ϕ ∧ ¬Bϕ
B[ϕ ∧ ¬Bϕ]
The central notion is doxastic defensibility. Doxastic defensibility does not require consistency tout court, but it requires that it is consistently possible for a speaker to believe a
set of sentences.
Doxastic defensibility A set of sentences {ϕ1 , ϕ2 . . . ϕn } is doxastically defensible just
in case B[ϕ1 ∧ ϕ2 ∧ . . . ϕn ] is consistent.
Replacing the B- by the K-operator we get the corresponding notion of epistemic defensibility. We may further define the notion of doxastic implication in terms of doxastic
indefensibility
Doxastic implication ϕ doxastically implies ψ just in case the set {ϕ, ¬Bψ} is doxastically indefensible.
Given the definition of defensibility it can easily be shown that {ϕ, ¬Bϕ} or the corresponding {ϕ, C¬ϕ} are doxastically indefensible. The minimum requirements for the accessibility
relation are seriality and transitivity. In order to interpret the knowledge-operator we add
reflexivity.
Consider a serial and transitive standard model M = hW, Rd , Re , V i, where Rd , Re ⊆
W × W . Rd is serial and transitive, Re reflexive, serial and transitive and Re ⊆ Rd
(knowledge implies belief). Assume for some arbitrary w in W , M w B[ϕ ∧ C¬ϕ]. Since
the necessity operator distributes over the conjunction this means
(i) M w Bϕ and
(ii)M w BC¬ϕ.
Rd is serial, so according to (i) there will be a w 0 (wRw 0 ) such that M w0 ϕ and according to
(ii) M w0 C¬ϕ. The latter means that there will be a w 00 (w 0 Rw 00 ) such that M w00 ¬ϕ.
But R is transitive. Thus wRw 00 , and according to (i) we also have M w00 ϕ. Thus
M w00 ⊥. Thus for no w, M: M w B[ϕ ∧ C¬ϕ]. Hence {ϕ, C¬ϕ} is doxastically
indefensible.
Since Re ⊆ Rd we see that K[ϕ ∧ P¬ϕ] is also inconsistent. We thus have the same result
for the knowledge operator. The set {ϕ, C¬ϕ} is thus doxastically and {ϕ, P¬ϕ} epistemically indefensible. We also have that the sets {ϕ, C¬ψ} and {ϕ, P¬ψ} are respectively
14
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
Bϕ, BC¬ϕ
w
∀
C¬ϕ
∃
w0
ϕ, ¬ϕ
w 00
Figure 3: Doxastic indefensibility
doxastically and epistemically indefensible whenever ϕ ψ. For suppose that {ϕ, C¬ψ}
were defensible in this situation. This would mean that for some w, M: M w B[ϕ ∧ C¬ψ],
but since ϕ ψ we would also have M w B[ψ ∧ C¬ψ] which as we just saw cannot obtain.
This is all we need to capture the cancellation predictions of Gazdar when stripping
the K- and P-operators from the presuppositional, content and implicature expression.
For the moment I will retain the epistemic modification of Gazdar’s clausals. I will
discuss their status in the next section. But I will leave out the modal operators from the
presuppositional expressions and the scalars. Nor will I encode Gazdar’s Quality implicature as part of the assertoric update. By the utterance of ϕ the context will thus not
be updated with the information that the speaker knows ϕ, but just with the contentexpression. I will, however, strengthen the requirement for contextual update. Instead of
requiring simply consistency I will require that contextual incrementation does not give
rise to indefensibility of the resulting context. This is in line with the previous discussion.
The context should not contain a description of the speaker’s commitments, but simply
the content of what he is committed to, and the latter will only consist of information
which he can possibly believe or know. It turns out that redefined along these lines the
resulting system yields the same predictions as Gazdar’s original formulation with respect
to the behaviour of presuppositions and implicatures. It will turn out that this has some
additional benefits.
I will first run through the main cases where the interaction between contextual, implicatural and presuppositional information yields the empirical predictions Gazdar wants
to account for and conclude with a short summary of definitions. Throughout the revised version I will use doxastic operators for the encoding of proto-implicatures, protopresuppositions and the contexual update. Whatever holds for them will apply a fortiori
to the stronger epistemic variants.
(i) Context and content defeats clausal and presuppositional information
Consider first the effect of prefixing the K-operator to the assertoric update. A typical
example of cancellation would occur in a modus ponens argument. Suppose we enter
Kp to the context. A subsequent utterance of p → q would add K(p → q) which in
this context entails Kq. The implication will moreover invoke the following set of protoimplicatures {Pp, P¬p, Pq, P¬q}. Since both {Kp, P¬p} and {Kq, P¬q} are inconsistent,
the proto-implicatures P¬p and P¬q will be cancelled. Note that we get the same result
if we skip the K-operator and require defensibility for the result of the contextual update.
The sets {p, C¬p} and {q, C¬q} are indefensible and the relevant clausals will equally get
1.4. ELIMINATING EPISTEMIC MODIFIERS
15
cancelled.16 Cancellation of presuppositional material by content typically occurs when
the (unmodalized) content conflicts with the presuppositional expression. So here Gazdar’s
system gives the desired results without any epistemic modification. Since inconsistent sets
of formulae are a fortiori indefensible, the original predictions are preserved.
(ii) The interaction between clausals and scalars
Scalars may be ‘suspended’ to use Horn’s terminology.17 An example is given in (12a).
Here the consequent is said to invoke the scalar that not all the boys were at the party.
Since no utterance of the full sentence will invoke this scalar it is cancelled in Gazdar’s
terminology.18 Gazdar achieves this effect by giving clausals priority over scalars and
modalizing scalars in the strong way discussed above. In (12a) the antecedent invokes
the clausal P¬¬(12b) which yields a conflict with the proto-scalar K¬(12b). Again we
may leave out the modalization when requiring defensibility for the update in view of the
indefensibility of {¬(12b), C¬¬(12b)}
(12)
a.
b.
Some, if not all of the boys were at the party.
All the boys were at the party
(iii) Clausals defeat presuppositions
The central predictions in Gazdar arise from the interaction between clausals and presuppositional expressions. We saw that K[John has a donkey], the proto-presupposition of
(9a), was defeated by the scalar P¬[John has a donkey]. It holds generally in Gazdar
that a scalar P¬ψ defeats a proto-presupposition Kϕ whenever ϕ ψ. Eliminating the
K-operator from the presupposition expression and requiring doxastic defensibility for the
contextual update yields the same result. For we just saw that {ϕ, C¬ψ} is doxastically
indefensible whenever ϕ ψ.
(iv) Inconsistent presuppositions defeat each other.
Since inconsistent presuppositional expressions that come unmodalized already conflict
there is no need for further modalization.
It is a simple exercise to check that the arguments can be repeated in cases where inconsistency in Gazdar is achieved by conjoining contextually established information with the
content expression. It thus turns out that we may safely do without the epistemic modification in content, presuppositional and scalar expressions, provided that we simultaneously
16
Note, by the way, that the positive clausals will pass Gazdar’s procedure unharmed. The resulting
context will thus contain implicatures that are simultaneously entailed by the sentence that gave rise to
them. Though this is logically not a problem, it is strange and conceptually at odds with the notion of
implicature.
17
Note that the claim that subclauses give rise to the same scalars as their unembedded variants seems
to give rise to a projection problem for implicatures. This is wrong. Implicatures are by definition not
conventionally attached to clauses but are computed on the basis of the content of a full utterance. This
simply means that for implicatures there is no projection problem in the standard sense of the word.
See Geurts (1999: 19-23) for an extensive discussion. I will ignore this point here and adopt Horn’s and
Gazdar’s assumptions for the moment.
18
It is assumed that the whole sentence has the form of a conditional.
16
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
strengthen the consistency requirement to defensibility. The resulting system will have the
same predictive power. This does not require epistemic but just doxastic defensibility. We
thus may weaken the knowledge requirement to belief.
The following definitions assume an independent definition of the set of proto-presuppositions (P P (ϕ)) and and proto-implicatures (P I(ϕ)). They are close to Beaver’s (1997)
reconstruction.19 In line with the previous discussion I assume that proto-presuppositions
and proto-scalars come unmodalized, and that the modality involved in the contextual
update and in the encoding of the clausals is serial and transitive. I leave out the ordering
between the clausals and scalars.
Defensible incrementation
(i)
Defensibility
X is doxastically defensible (Def ens(X)) iff
{Bϕ | ϕ ∈ X} 2 ⊥
(ii)
The defensible incrementation of X with Y (X ∪ Y )
X ∪ Y :=
X ∪ {ϕ ∈ Y | ∀Z ⊆ Y (Def ens(X ∪ Z) → Def ens(X ∪ Z ∪ {ϕ}))
Contextual update of information
(i)
c + ϕ = c ∪ {ϕ}
(ii)
c ++ ϕ = (c + ϕ) ∪ P I(ϕ)
(iii) c +++ ϕ = (c ++ ϕ) ∪ P P (ϕ)
propositional content
implicature
presupposition
Implicature and presupposition
Implicature
19
See Beaver (1997: 962-3). Beaver’s definitions are closer to Gazdar in retaining the epistemic modification of the content and presuppositional expressions. This could, however, easily be remedied by
adopting Beaver’s 2001 suggestion (see note 15) and incorporating epistemic modification in the definition
of consistency. On the other hand, Beaver deviates from Gazdar and the definitions given here in defining
the presuppositions of an utterance ϕ as those proto-presuppositions that are in the final context but not
entailed by ϕ. This has the advantage that an utterance of (i) does not presuppose (iii), but has the
disadvantage that the same holds for non-compound sentences like (ii), since these are supposed to entail
the presuppositional information.
(i) John owns a donkey and keeps his donkey in hiding.
(ii) John keeps his donkey in hiding.
(iii) John owns a donkey.
Beaver 2001 (pp. 59-61) follows Gazdar in defining the presuppositions of an utterance as those proto-presuppositions that make it to the the output context, which gives exactly the opposite results. One would,
however, want to retain the presupposition in (ii) but not in (i). A provisional solution is to adopt a twodimensional approach (Karttunen and Peters (1979), Lerner and Zimmerman (1981)) and to distinguish
between (a) the presuppositional information that is invoked in view of the presuppositional expression
(Gazdar’s proto-presupposition), (b) its counterpart in the content expression, and then take care that the
former does not survive in (i). In the next section I will suggest a solution along these lines in a revised
Gazdarian model (limited to a propositional language and neglecting the binding problem).
1.5. THE STATUS OF GAZDARIAN CLAUSALS
(i)
17
ϕ implicates ψ in c iff
a. ψ ∈ P I(ϕ)
b. ψ ∈ c +++ {ϕ}
Presupposition
(ii)
ϕ presupposes ψ in c iff
a. ψ ∈ P P (ϕ)
b. ψ ∈ c +++ {ϕ}
Before I discuss the status of Gazdarian clausals two points should be made. The first
concerns the status of Gazdarian presuppositions, the second the status of implicatural
information. As to the first point, the definitions given above allow us to isolate the
presuppositional information that is conveyed by an utterance but that is not already
part of the incoming context. That is, in a more current terminology, the material that
is (to be) accommodated. Let me stress again that this does not capture the intuitive
notion of presupposition as information that is required to assign an interpretation to a
sentence. As to the second point, one would like to have a principled distinction between
presupposed and implicated material. Though presupposed material will normally be part
of the incoming context, implicated material won’t. It clearly makes no sense to convey
information by way of implicature if this information is already taken for granted by the
participants. However, as the system stands, neither of these distinctions can be made.
The new information conveyed by ϕ in c is (c +++ {ϕ}) \ c. But the presuppositions of ϕ in
c are simply the proto-presuppositions of ϕ that are part of c+++{ϕ}, and the implicatures
of ϕ in c are those proto-implicatures of ϕ that satisfy the very same condition.
1.5
The status of Gazdarian clausals
In the previous section I noted that the strong epistemic modalization of the different
pieces of informational content in Gazdar’s original system is an artifact which is dictated
by the requirement of inconsistency between content, implicature and presuppositional
expressions in order to account for cancellation effects. I showed that the same effect can
be achieved by eliminating epistemic modification and simultaneously strengthening the
requirement on defeasible incrementation from mere consistency to doxastic defensibility.
The reconstruction given above showed that this allows us to dispense with all epistemic
modification but for the clausals.
In this section I will discuss the status of Gazdar’s clausals, the counterintuitive stipulation of priority of clausal implicatures over presuppositionally induced information, and
I will suggest a reinterpretation which does not conceive of clausals as conversational implicatures.
Gazdarian clausals are invoked by embedded sentences that are not entailed by their
matrix. They thus do the work they are supposed to do in cases like (1a), since in here
the clausal that he may not have a donkey conflicts with the presuppositional expression.
However, in a paradigmatic case like (13a) no clausals are invoked and the presuppositional expression thus passes unharmed. (13a) is thus on a par with (13b) which equally
presupposes that Jo
18
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
(13) a.
b.
John owns a donkey and keeps his donkey in hiding.
John keeps his donkey in hiding.
By an utterance of (13b) a speaker will typically presuppose that John owns a donkey.
When uttering (13a) he never will. A Stalnaker type explanation is straightforward. When
uttering the first conjunct of (13a) we indicate that we don’t take the information that John
owns a donkey for granted. When uttering the second conjunct we do. At the moment
we interpret the first conjunct, the context changes since we add asserted information
to the conversational background. By its very utterance its informational status thus
changes. It counts as presuppositional from now on and we may rely on the information
just introduced in a presuppositional way. The crucial point is that given the assumption
that presuppositional information should ideally be part of the incoming context, (13a) can
never be interpreted as being presupposing as this would defeat the point of the assertion
of the first conjunct. Thinking along Gazdarian lines we thus would like to have a means to
defeat the presupposition in (13a) but not (13b). Note that clausals as conceived by Gazdar
will not do the job. For firstly, the first conjunct of (13a) is entailed by the full sentence
which means that no (proto-)clausal will be invoked and the incrementation procedure will
thus leave presuppositional expression induced by the second conjunct of (13a) unharmed.
And note, secondly, that given the interpretation of a context as a commitment slate there
is no way to redefine the system so as to invoke such clausals after all. A Gazdarian clausal
carries the information that both the relevant clause and its negation are compatible with
the knowledge of the speaker. This would clearly be an unfortunate condition to impose
on assertoric acts, and it would moreover violate Grice’s Quality maxim. Instead we would
like to say that an assertion is only felicitous in a context which is compatible with the
truth and the falsity of the relevant clause. But in order to say this we have to abandon
the interpretation of a context as the commitment slate of a speaker. If we view a context
not in the Hamblin/Gazdar way as the information the speaker is committed to, but
as a common ground in the Stalnaker/Karttunen sense, we can get the desired effect by
adopting Stalnaker’s principle that an utterance must be compatible with, but not entailed
by, the incoming context.20 If we furthermore associate with each embedded clause a local
context in the sense of Karttunen and apply the principle with respect to the local context
of each subclause of a compound sentence (thus requiring that each subclause should
be compatible with but not entailed by its local context21 ) we simultaneously capture
the purported cancellation effects Gazdar captures by invoking clausals in non-entailing
environments. Note that such a reinterpretation allows us to dispense with the epistemic
modification of the purported clausals.22
20
See Stalnaker (1978)
Though the terminology might suggest a non-trivial similarity, this is in fact very different from
Karttunen 1974 and other satisfaction theorists, who require that the presuppositional expressions of each
subclause are entailed by their local context
22
This is the strategy followed in Van der Sandt (1988) who presents a projection mechanism that is
inspired by Stalnaker. The same principles figure in a modified way in his (1992) anaphoric DRT-based
account.
21
1.5. THE STATUS OF GAZDARIAN CLAUSALS
19
Clausals are not implicatures
To understand why the ordering as stipulated by Gazdar does the work it is supposed
to do, we have to see that Gazdarian clausals should not be construed as implicatures.
Clausals differ in status from standard conversational implicatures in the Gricean sense.
Conversational implicatures are typically computed on the basis of the incoming context,
the content of the sentence to be processed and Gricean principles. They are typically
incremented in the output context. Gazdarian clausals, I claim, differ in exactly this
respect. They derive from pragmatic constraints on contexts, that is, constraints on input
contexts.
To illustrate this point consider the difference between the implicatures invoked by sentences like (8a) and the suggestion of uncertainty that goes with disjunctions. Scalars and
other types implicatures come with an utterance. They are, to use Levinson’s terminology,
‘essentially gratuitous’.23 In this respect they differ both from presuppositional inferences
and clausals. The latter come about as inferences that result from contextual requirements,
that is requirements the input context has to fulfill to accept an utterance as felicitous.
The difference in cancellation behaviour illustrates this. In view of their very nature scalars
may be easily defeated by conflicting or unsupportive assumptions as following example
from Levinson 2000 illustrates:
(14) A. Is there any evidence against them?
B. Some of their identity documents are forgeries.
Here I would rather say that the purported implicature that not all of their documents
are forgeries is not even invoked. The suggestion of epistemic uncertainty that is typical
for clausals is not so easily defeated, however. In fact, normal assertoric uses of sentences
invoking clausals are never felicitous when the common ground conflicts with members
of the clausal set. Consider the disjunction (1a) and suppose that the truth of the first
disjunct were taken for granted. This would not defeat the suggestion of uncertainty but
instead result in sheer uninterpretability. The underlying motivation is Gricean. For in
this situation the full disjunction would convey the same information as the mere utterance
of the second disjunct would have done. And the utterance of just the second disjunct is
thus clearly a more efficient way to convey the desired information. The only examples
of purported cancellation of clausals I am aware of are examples of non-information oriented discourse, that is types of discourse in which the assumption that the conversational
maxims are in force, is lifted. This happens for example in a modus ponens argument, or
exam situations. However, such situations where conversational presumptions are lifted in
advance are very different from the cases of e.g. scalars where an implicature is computed
on the basis of the asssumption that the maxims are in force.
Conceiving of a context as a common ground we may interpret a Gazdarian clausal set
{Pϕ, P¬ϕ} as signalling that both Pϕ and P¬ϕ are compatible with but not entailed by
contextual information. Geurts (1995, 1999) pointed out that Gazdar’s clausals can be seen
as unresolved issues in a discourse constraining the process of presupposition projection.24
23
See the discussion in Levinson (2000: 60-63)
Just as Gazdar’s thesis Geurts’ thesis was written under the supervision of Hans Kamp. It was
completed in 1995. References are to his 1999 book which is an expanded and reworked version of this
work.
24
20
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
Both in (1a) and in (15) the clausal set indicates that it is not known (believed, assumed)
whether John owns a donkey.
(15) It is possible that John owns a donkey.
Instead of saying that disjunctions as in (1a) or epistemic modals as (15) invoke implicatures we better say that they signal an issue in the ongoing discourse. Such an issue
may be addressed explicitly and be settled by the claim that John owns a donkey or by
the claim that he does not. Note that if an utterance signals in whatever way that the
discourse context contains some issue, it would be self-defeating if the utterance of the very
same sentence would settle this issue by presuppositional means. For example, in (1a) this
would imply that the speaker both indicates that he does not know whether Johns owns
a donkey and assumes that the issue whether John owns one has already been settled.
Standing issues in a discourse thus may prevent presuppositions from being projected to
the main context. This gives rise to a simple constraint on presupposition projection:
A presupposition may not be processed in such a way that the resulting structure would settle an issue.
This view is supported by the now well-established account of information structure that
assumes a direct correlation between topics, questions and the acceptability of discourse
units.25 On this view a discourse owes its coherence to the fact that utterances can be
viewed as answers to explicit or implicit questions. And the view is supported by the fact
that there is a straightforward correlation between question/answer pairs and the information structure of a sentence. In the case of wh-questions this correlation is reflected
in focus/background division of a sentences. By lambda-abstracting over the non-focused
part we obtain the focal background and by binding the relevant variable by a wh-operator
we obtain the question. This question may be contextually given in which case the utterance that answers should be congruent with the question to be felicitous, that is the
focus of the answer should correspond with the wh-position in the question. If no question is found in the incoming context, the focus/background division provides the clue for
the interpreter to construct the question the utterance is supposed to answer. He will, to
use to the presuppositional terminology, accommodate it. It is with respect to such an
accommodated question that the original utterance expresses an answer. The relevance of
this fact for presupposition theory has already been observed by Strawson (1964). With
respect to disjunctions Grice characterized the situation as follows:
A standard employment of ‘or’ is in the specification of possibilities [...] each of
which is relevant in the same way to a given topic. ‘A or B’ is characteristically
employed to give a partial [...] answer to some “W”-question to which each
disjunct, if assertible, would give a fuller, more specific satisfactory answer.
Grice1989: 68
Simons (2001) develops this idea in a Hamblin-type theory of questions. She points out that
Grice’s topic can be characterized as the question the disjunction is supposed to partially
answer and she shows in detail that a disjunction can only provide an (informative) answer
to a question in case each disjunct provides a (partial) answer to a question. Note that
25
See for example van Kuppevelt (1995) or Ginzburg (1995).
1.6. BRIDGING TO QUESTIONS IN DISCOURSE
21
(1a), the disjunction we started with, is a special case. It is typically an answer to the
following yes/no-question:
(16) Does John own a donkey?
Note furthermore that in a partition analysis like Groenendijk and Stokhof’s26 the cells
of the partition induced by the interrogative correspond to the Gazdarian clausals if we
interpret these as signalling that both the information that John owns a donkey and that
he does not own a donkey are compatible with the context. And, note finally that such
an interpretation of clausals as contextually given issues or questions does not construe
them as conversational implicatures, but typically interprets them as constraints on inputcontexts. We will see that a proper appreciation of this fact suggests a simple solution to
the problem posed by the so-called bathroom sentences.
1.6
Bridging to questions in discourse
Evans (1977) pointed out that sentences like (17), that is the pronominalized version of
(1a), are problematic for theories that treat pronouns as bound variables.27
(17) Either John does not own a donkey or he keeps it very quiet.
They are equally problematic for current theories of dynamic interpretation.28 Though the
accommodation mechanism of the anaphoric account of presupposition yields the correct
result for (1a) by predicting that the presuppositional anaphor his donkey will be locally
accommodated in the representation of the second disjunct, it is unable to handle its
pronominal counterpart. The reason is simple. On the anaphoric account presuppositional
constructions allow accommodation since they normally carry enough descriptive material
to establish an antecedent. In the present case the information that John owns a donkey
can be retrieved from the full presuppositional construction. This material may be used
to create an antecedent at some accessible level of discourse structure in case the discourse
does not already provide one. The explanation for (1a) now runs as follows. The first
conjunct is not accessible for anaphoric reference which precludes binding. In order to get
an interpretation we thus have to accommodate. Global accommodation is not an option.
Accommodation of the presuppositional information at the main level of discourse would
violate conditions on discourse acceptability: it would result in a structure that corresponds
with the following infelicitous discourse
26
See Groenendijk & Stokhof (1984)
The problem was first is pointed out and discussed by Geach (1962: 129-30). The example that has
become famous in the linguistic literature is Partee’s ‘Either there is no bathroom in this house or it is in
a funny place.’ Hence the label ‘bathroom’-sentence.
28
Krahmer & Muskens (1995) give a technical solution by reducing the problem posed by ‘bathroom’sentences to the fact that double negation creates inaccessible contexts in DRT. They note that a disjunction can be rendered as an implication which yields ¬¬ϕ1 → ϕ2 for ¬ϕ1 ∨ ϕ2 and then present a semantics
for DRT in which double negation acts as a ‘hole’ for anaphoric reference. This reduces the disjunction
problem to the double negation problem. There are several problems with this proposal though. One is
that accessibility in such contexts does not always require that the negative element(s) are explicitly given,
as pointed out by Geurts (1999: 74 ff and 128 ff) . A second problem is that it does not generalize to the
epistemic lists of alternatives such as in (20a) as pointed out by Van Rooy (2001: 639).
27
22
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
(18) John owns a donkey. Either he does not own a donkey or he keeps it very quiet.
The plain assertion of ‘John owns a donkey and keeps it very quiet’ would have conveyed
the same information as (17) but in a less redundant way. The only accessible position
left is the second disjunct and the material will thus be accommodated there, yielding an
interpretation which can be paraphrased as:
(19) Either John does not own a donkey or he owns a donkey and keeps it very quiet.
This correctly accounts for the interpretation of (1a). However, in conjunction with the
claim that presuppositional expressions are essentially anaphors this solution is problematic. If presuppositional expressions are treated on a par with pronouns it is imperative to
provide a unified treatment of both (1a) and (17), that is, we have to give a uniform explanation for the interpretation of the explicit presuppositional construction and its pronominalized counterpart. Since pronouns are devoid of descriptive content and thus lack the
capacity to accommodate, the explanation given for (1a) does not carry over to (17). In
the latter the pronominal variable will not find an accessible antecedent and thus remain
free leaving this structure without an interpretation. The problem is aggravated when we
see that the phenomenon is not confined to disjunctions, but also occurs in conjunctions
as the following:29
(20) a.
b.
It is possible that John does not own a donkey, but it is also possible that he
keeps his donkey very quiet.
It is possible that John does not own a donkey, but it is also possible that he
keeps it very quiet.
As in the disjunctive case, an analysis by means of accommodation yields the right result
in (20a) but is not applicable in the case of (20b). And again we intuitively perceive a link
from the anaphoric expression in the second conjunct to a formally inaccessible position
in the first. We would thus, as in the disjunctive case, like to have an explanation which
holds both for the case where the anaphoric expression is given by a full description and
for its pronominalized counterpart. Note, moreover, that the modal examples are similar
to the disjunctive counterparts in that the conjuncts give a specification of two alternative
possibilities which typically give an answer to the same yes/no-question. And note finally
that in both cases the specification of the possibility that John does not own a donkey
and the possibility that he owns one but keeps it in hiding, should be exhaustive with
respect to the knowledge of the speaker in order for him to know that the full sentence is
true. The parallelism between disjunctions on the one hand and modalized conjunctions
as in (20) on the other is made explicit in Zimmerman (2000) and Geurts (ms.) who argue
that disjunctions can be analyzed as (exhaustive) lists of epistemic possibilities. On this
account the logical form of ‘not ϕ or χ’ comes out as ♦¬ϕ ∧ ♦χ and (1a) may be thus
paraphrased as (20b). Adopting this analysis allows us to give a uniform analysis of the
disjunctive case and such a list of epistemic conjuncts.
I want to suggest that the key to the solution is found in Kamp & Reyle (1993:187-90).
They observe that a disjunction of the form ‘A or B’ can be paraphrased as ‘A or otherwise
B’. In such a paraphrase of (1a) the otherwise would refer to the other case, that is the case
29
These examples originate in Liberman (1973), and have been extensively discussed in the earlier
presupposition literature.
1.6. BRIDGING TO QUESTIONS IN DISCOURSE
23
described by the first disjunct. According to Kamp and Reyle this licenses us to postulate a
representation for what is referred to by otherwise and then extending that representation
by incorporating it in the representation of [:he keeps it quiet]. Geurts (1999: 75)
adopts this idea and proposes to insert the material into the second conjunct as an inferred
antecedent. Both explanations are incomplete though. On Kamp and Reyle’s view the
question arises where the material encoding ‘the other case’ comes from. It cannot simply
be constructed as the complement of the first disjunct for then we would end up with a
double negation and thus an inaccessible antecedent after all. We thus have to assume
that ‘the other case’ refers to the corresponding unnegated sentence and that the material
thus retrieved may be inserted. And on Geurts’ account we are faced with the question:
inferred in what way? However, if we take the remarks by Grice (p. 20 above) seriously
and once we see that the disjunction is to be interpreted as an answer to the (explicitly
given or implicitly assumed) yes/no-question ‘Does John own a donkey?’, the answer is
straightforward. In order to interpret the disjunction the interpreter has to accommodate
the question. And adopting the standard Hamblin-type account of questions we find the
alternative possibilities in the cells of the partition of the question thus accommodated.
To illustrate such an analysis let us first consider the non-disjunctive case:
(21) a.
b.
Does John own a donkey? *He keeps it very quiet.
Does John own a donkey? Sure. But he keeps it very quiet.
The first discourse is out. The question does not imply that the speaker assumes that
there is a donkey and the indefinite is not available for pronominal reference. The second
discourse is fine. The pronoun gets its value from the answer which in turn is one of the
cells of the bipartition the question induces. This is uncontroversial.
The situation in the disjunctive case is basically the same. The second disjunct gives
an answer to the question by being in the second cell of the partition. Together with the
incoming context this cell figures as a provisional context for the interpretation of this
disjunct. It follows that the use of the pronoun is licensed since John’s donkey inhabits
each of the worlds of this provisional context. The second disjunct thus gets a determinate
interpretation in its provisional context which entails that John owns a donkey. The
proposal I want to make thus agrees both with Kamp and Reyle that otherwise refers to
the other case and with Geurts that the interpretation is secured in view of a bridging
inference. But unlike these authors I want to claim that ‘the other case’ is not constructed
out of the first disjunct. Instead ‘the other case’ is given by one of the cells of the partition
induced by the antecedently constructed question. Of course this does not imply that
the indefinite in the question is accessible for anaphoric reference. In order to interpret
the disjunction we have to turn to the cells of the bipartition individually. The first
disjunct corresponds with the cell which presents the negative answer. We then turn to
the alternative cell, thus deriving
(22) If John owns a donkey, he keeps it very quiet.
as the bridging inference.
If this analysis is on the right track the relevant interpretation does not come about
by some anaphoric link across the disjuncts, nor is it due to straightforward insertion of
material from the first disjunct into the second. The relation is indirect in that the full
disjunction allows us to create some question by accommodation. It is the question thus
24
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
accommodated which figures as the context of interpretation of the disjunction and which
allows us to interpret the pronominal element.
1.7
Conclusion
In 1979 Hans Kamp gave the following formulation of the received view on the relation
between semantics and pragmatics in a theory of meaning:
(i) The concept, or concepts, characterized by the recursive component of the theory
belongs to semantics.
(ii) Moreover no notion to which this component refers belongs to pragmatics
Kamp 1979: 265
He went on to state and argue that there is ‘no good reason why semantics and pragmatics
should be separate in the sense that [the principle stated above] tries to articulate’. Kamp’s
argumentation was based on the analysis of non-assertoric speech acts. The same view,
but now based on the analysis of generalized conversational implicatures, was recently put
forward forcefully by Steve Levinson in Levinson (2000).
In this paper I discussed Gazdar’s pragmatic theory as a particulary elegant elaboration
of the received view. Gazdar’s theory is based on the assumption that semantic content can
be determined without calling on pragmatic principles. A sentence in a context determines
a proposition in the classical sense. Pragmatic processing only enters the scene after this
semantic object has been established thus allowing us to determine a more substantial informational object, the information conveyed. Subsequent work in discourse representation
theory and, in particular, the developments in presupposition theory and related areas in
the nineties have shown that this picture is in need of a thorough revision. The idea that
the semantic and pragmatic components of a theory of meaning can be seen as separate
modules in the sense that a sentence in a context yields a fully determined proposition
which may then be ‘enriched’ or ‘strenghtened’ by pragmatic inferencing, thereby only
affecting the output context, turned out to be untenable. Instead, at the very moment an
utterance is processed principles of a Gricean nature play a crucial role in determining the
background with respect to which this utterance will get an interpretation. This is abundantly clear when we have a closer look at the all pervasive phenomenon of presupposition
accommodation, and, in particular, when we look at the factors that constrain this process.
In this paper I went back in history, took Gazdar’s modular view as a starting point and
showed first that, even when we adhere to Gazdar’s original architecture, some obstacles
can easily be removed. I showed that there is no reason to stick to the strong epistemic
modalization of the various semantic and pragmatic components and, furthermore, that
there is no need to retain the counterintuitive ordering between implicatures and presuppositions. Adopting a dynamic view on meaning and reinstating presuppositional information
as information that is contextually required to establish an interpretation, I showed that
Gazdarian clausals should not be conceived of as standard Gricean implicatures. They
should, instead, be seen as constraints on input contexts regulating the resolution process
of inter alia presuppositional information. I suggested that they are better conceived of
as questions or unresolved issues in discourse. And I showed that it is exactly the possibility of such a reinterpretation that explains why Gazdar’s original clausals did the work
1.7. CONCLUSION
25
they were devised for. This illustrates why the semantic autonomy hypothesis cannot be
upheld. In cases where presuppositional information is not yet there, we need to accommodate. Accommodation is an operation on input contexts and this process is constrained
by factors which are uncontroversially pragmatic and Gricean in nature.
26
CHAPTER 1. PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES
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