Reasoning-based analyses of presuppositions

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Judith Tonhauser
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 566780232

The proposed project is concerned with presuppositions. Specifically, the project will investigate the viability of reasoning-based analyses of presuppositions by developing such analyses for a heterogeneous set of presuppositions and evaluating their predictions based on data collected in behavioral experiments. The goal of the project is to identify which presuppositions lend themselves to reasoning-based analyses and which are better given other analyses. Reasoning-based analyses of presuppositions derive projection from general-purpose reasoning over utterance informativity. Three such analyses have been developed thus far, namely for the pre-state content of “stop”, for the contrastive content of contrastive statives, like “Sam has a Green Card”, and for the content of the complement of “know”. These analyses are the only extant analyses of presuppositions that can predict that presuppositions project and that their projection is sensitive to the Question Under Discussion and to interpreters’ prior beliefs. These analyses therefore hold great promise for advancing our theoretical conception of presuppositions. The project will empirically investigate the projection of seven presuppositions as well as the sensitivity of their projection to the QUD and interpreters’ prior beliefs. The seven presuppositions are the possession content of possessive DPs, the contents of the clausal complements of “know” and “discover”, the pre-state content of “stop”, the prejacent of “again” and manner adverb constructions, and the contrastive content of contrastive statives like “Sam has a Green Card” (which implies that Sam is not a U.S. citizen). These behavioral experiments will contribute to filling gaps in our empirical understanding of presuppositions. The project will develop reasoning-based analyses of the four presuppositions associated with possessive DPs, “discover”, “again” and manner adverb constructions. It will evaluate the predictions of reasoning-based analyses and other analyses of the seven aforementioned presuppositions against the data collected in the behavioral experiments on the basis of how well they capture the observed projection variability, and the sensitivity of projection to the QUD and prior beliefs. More broadly, the project will contribute to our understanding of how interpreters integrate linguistic and extra-linguistic information in drawing inferences about utterance meaning.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants