{"id":15382,"date":"2023-03-06T06:02:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=15382"},"modified":"2023-03-06T07:11:50","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T12:11:50","slug":"linglunch-3-9-keny-chatain-institut-jean-nicod-ens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2023\/03\/06\/linglunch-3-9-keny-chatain-institut-jean-nicod-ens\/","title":{"rendered":"LingLunch 3\/9 - Keny Chatain (Institut Jean Nicod (ENS))"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Speaker: <\/strong> Keny Chatain (Institut Jean Nicod (ENS))<br class=\"\" \/><br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Title: <\/strong>Reducing Pronoun Accessibility To Presupposition Satisfaction<br class=\"\" \/><br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Time: <\/strong>Thursday, March 9th, 12:30pm - 2pm<br class=\"\" \/><br clear='none'\/>\n<br class=\"\" \/><br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Abstract: <\/strong>A pronoun cannot always co-refer with a given DP: while the cases in (1a-c) are natural, the cases in (1d-e) are not interpretable. The problem of pronoun accessibility is the problem of determining which antecedent-pronoun configuration are licit, which ones give rise to deviance. The cases in (1) point to a simple generalization: the pronoun &#8220;it&#8221; can co-refer with &#8220;a phone-book&#8221; if and only if the existence of a phone-book can be taken for granted at the point where the pronoun &#8220;it&#8221; is used. Simple though it may seem, this generalization is not fully validated by many current theories of pronouns. Such theories typically under-generate, failing to license cases like (1c) as well as other more complicated examples.<\/p>\n<p>(1)<br clear='none'\/>\na. There is a phone-book<sub>7<\/sub> and it<sub>7<\/sub> is in the cabinet.<br clear='none'\/>\nb. If there is a phone-book<sub>7<\/sub>, it<sub>7<\/sub> is in the cabinet.<br clear='none'\/>\nc. Either there isn&#8217;t a phone-book<sub>7<\/sub> and it<sub>7<\/sub> is in the cabinet. (attributed to Partee)<br clear='none'\/>\nd. # Either there is a phone-book<sub>7<\/sub> or it<sub>7<\/sub> is in the cabinet.<br clear='none'\/>\ne. # There might be a phone-book<sub>7<\/sub> and it<sub>7<\/sub> is in the cabinet.<\/p>\n<p>Taking the generalization at face-value, I propose a system where a pronoun can be interpreted if and only if the existence of a witness - a phone-book in the cases above - can be presupposed. This theory builds on insights from E-type theories (Evans, 1980 ; Heim, 1990 ; Elbourne, 2005) but drops some of the assumptions that have made such theories inviable, like uniqueness.<\/p>\n<p>The benefits are conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, by reducing pronoun accessibility to presupposition satisfaction, the proposal can build upon so-called &#8220;explanatory&#8221; theories of presuppositions (Schlenker, 2009 ; George, 2008 ; Fox, 2013, a.o.). Such theories derive discourse effects from truth-conditional meaning, instead of baking these effects into meanings themselves (Soames, 1989), as in Dynamic Semantics (Heim, 1983, a. o.). Second, the proposal has a broad empirical coverage: it explains the original cases in (1), but also the more complex quantified cases in (2) of quantifier subordination (Roberts, 1987) and donkey anaphora (Geach, 1962). In addition, it makes a range of new predictions, regarding the possibility of cataphora and pronouns licensed by pragmatic inferences.<\/p>\n<p>(2)<br clear='none'\/>\na. Every farmer who has a donkey feeds it hay.<br clear='none'\/>\nb. Every farmer has a donkey. Few of them feed it hay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Keny Chatain (Institut Jean Nicod (ENS)) Title: Reducing Pronoun Accessibility To Presupposition Satisfaction Time: Thursday, March 9th, 12:30pm - 2pm Abstract: A pronoun cannot always co-refer with a given DP: while the cases in (1a-c) are natural, the cases in (1d-e) are not interpretable. The problem of pronoun accessibility is the problem of determining [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15388,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382\/revisions\/15388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}