This note focuses on the interaction between free choice and presupposition projection. ![]() For example, Maria can go study in Tokyo or Boston suggests that Maria can go study in Tokyo and that she can go study in Boston (Kamp 1973). inferences to the effect that each disjunct is possible. Sentences involving disjunctions under a possibility modal give rise to so-called 'free choice' inferences, i.e. We find strong evidence for left-to-right filtering across conjunctions, but no evidence for right-to-left filtering, suggesting that, at least as a default, presupposition projection across conjunction is indeed asymmetric. Building on previous work by Chemla & Schlenker (2012) and Schwarz (2015), we approach this question experimentally by using an inference task which controls for redundancy and presupposition suspension. As a number of authors have recently pointed out, however, whether or not this conclusion is warranted is not clear once we take into account independent issues of redundancy. Is the basic mechanism behind presupposition projection fundamentally asymmetric or symmetric? This is a basic question for the theory of presupposition, which also bears on broader issues concerning the source of asymmetries observed in natural language: are these simply rooted in superficial asymmetries of language use- language use unfolds in time, which we experience as fundamentally asymmetric- or can they be, at least in part, directly referenced in linguistic knowledge and representations? In this paper we aim to make progress on these questions by exploring presupposition projection across conjunction, which has typically been taken as a central piece of evidence that presupposition projection is asymmetric. How can it also be that Might p and not p and Not p and might p are inconsistent? To make sense of this situation, I propose a new theory of epistemic modals which aims to account for their subtle embedding behavior and shed new light on the dynamics of information in natural language. This creates a puzzle, since there is decisive reason to think that Might p is consistent with Not p. I adduce a variety of data which I argue can best be accounted for if we treat Wittgenstein sentences as being classically inconsistent. In this paper I argue against this consensus. All approaches agree that both Moore sentences and Wittgenstein sentences are classically consistent. A variety of approaches have been developed to account for those differences. But it turns out these two constructions embed in different ways-in particular as parts of larger constructions like Wittgenstein (1953)'s 'It might be raining and it's not' and Moorean sentences like 'It's raining and for all I know, it's not' (Moore, 1942). What does 'might' mean? One hypothesis is that 'It might be raining' is essentially an avowal of ignorance like 'For all I know, it's raining'. those around the so-called "explanatory problem" for dynamic semantics (Soames, 1982 Heim, 1990 Schlenker, 2009). ![]() This result has important consequences for debates in semantics and pragmatics, e.g. Consequently, we think that the local contexts of subclausal expressions will likely have to be stipulated. However, no existing non-stipulative account predicts this. In order to explain this, we suggest that the local context of determiners needs to contain the information carried by their restrictor. the fact that sentences such as `All of the two presidential candidates are crooked' are unacceptable. The empirical basis of our investigation concerns some data discussed by Anvari (2018b), e.g. ![]() Our central tool for probing the local contexts of subclausal elements is the principle Maximize Presupposition! (Percus, 2006 Singh, 2011). More specifically, we focus on the local contexts of quantificational determiners, e.g. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by drawing attention to the local contexts of subclausal expressions. ![]() Recently, theorists have tried to develop general, non-stipulative accounts of local contexts (Schlenker, 2009 Ingason, 2016 Mandelkern & Romoli, 2017a). One of the central topics in semantic theory over the last few decades concerns the nature of local contexts.
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