A. The presupposition of (3) is that someone broke the typewriter. That of (4) is that for some salient person x, x is going to Sweden (assuming “Thony” is focussed). Note that the presupposition of the latter sentence cannot be simply that someone other than Thony is going to Sweden (recall Kai’s discussion of Kripke’s famous example of dinner in N.Y.). To convince yourself that these are indeed the right presuppositions, examine their projection behaviour in embedded contexts, eg., Was it Anju who broke the typewriter? If it was Anju who broke the typewriter, I will be very upset.

B. They seem virtually impossible to accommodate, no matter how good the context may be. For example, imagine a future time when M.I.T.’s linguistics department has two students and two faculty members. Now imagine that you are visiting the Institute, and imagine further that it is common ground that, despite our small number of active participants, we are very lively, and every day, at least one of us gives a talk. Imagine further that Lucia is another visitor, and it is common ground that this is so. Now imagine me saying to you (out of the blue): “Lucia gave a talk today too.” Sounds very strange – what do you mean “too?” This strangeness persists despite the fact that it is common ground that at least one of me or my three colleagues gave a talk today.

Surprisingly enough, the above presuppositions are easily accommodated in fictional contexts. Imagine you pick up a new book tomorrow, and the first couple of lines read as follows:

1. The man with the black hat returned to the café. The gazed look in his eye suggested trouble. I was trapped inside, and he was headed my way.
2. I wanted to go to Sweden too, but my many nights at the casino and at the shady bar in Central Square prevented me from being able to do so.
3. It was one of the grand lawyers of Lahore who suggested that I should go to the Hira Mandi, the Diamond Market, the area of the singing and dancing girls, the prostitutes’ area. (This sentence is actually taken from a work of non-fiction. It can be found on p.281 of V.S. Naipaul’s “Beyond Belief”, 1999, a great work of travel- writing published by Abacus (London). It is the first line of a new section in the book – the required presupposition has not at all been mentioned in the prior text)

C. Let us start by examining the difference between the presupposition of the “too” sentence and that of the “my daughter” sentence. We have seen that it is pretty easy to accommodate the “my daughter” presupposition, based on our beliefs about people of Kai’s age, how much we trust Kai, whether or not Kai’s having a daughter is at issue, etc. However, with “too”, there is a specific requirement that for some particular salient x, x is going to Sweden. In a context where there is no such salient proposition, the hearer has nothing to work with – whereas in the “my sister” case the presupposition is clear (whether or not it is satisfied by the common ground is a separate question), in the “too” case the sentence’s presupposition must be filled in by salient features of the context. In the absence of this contextual specification, the hearer is not even in a position to decide whether or not to accommodate, since the prior question of what she is to accommodate remains unresolved. Thus, we might suggest that those presuppositions that require contextual specification of some salient person or property or proposition (as with the definite article, pronouns, demonstratives, too, etc) just can’t be accommodated unless the context fills them in. This is in opposition to the “my daughter” example, which doesn’t require any particular context to furnish any particular salient features in order for the presupposition to be determined.

Unfortunately, it is not at all obvious how this account could be extended to constructions like it-clefts, which have a very definite presupposition (namely, that someone broke the typewriter) that doesn’t seem to require any contextual specification, yet remains strongly resistant to accommodation.

We will expand on these issues in class.