Pronominal, temporal and descriptive anaphora

Transcription

1 Pronominal, temporal and descriptive anaphora Dept. of Philosophy Radboud University, Nijmegen

2 Overview Overview Temporal and presuppositional anaphora Kripke s and Kamp s puzzles Some additional data

3 Overview Kripke 2009 Abstract LI 40.3: I argue that many presuppositional elements are anaphoric to previous discourse or contextual elements. In compound sentences these can be other clauses of the sentence. We thus need a theory of presuppositional anaphora, analogous to the corresponding pronominal theory. Luckily such a theory exists

4 Overview Van der Sandt 1992 Abstract JoS 9.4: 333 [... ] presuppositional expressions are [... ] anaphoric expressions, which have internal structure and semantic content. [... ] they only differ from pronouns in that they have more descriptive content. It is this [... ] which enables them to create an antecedent in case discourse does not provide one. If their capacity to accommodate is taken into account they can be treated by basically the same mechanism which handles the resolution of pronouns. [... ] Section 3 presents a coding of presuppositional expressions [... ] The final section [discusses] the constraints which govern the resolution of presuppositional anaphors.

5 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Presuppositional anaphora Presuppositions are anaphoric expressions that search for suitable antecedents. If they find an antecedent they will be bound and the descriptive information associated with the presuppositional anaphor will be transferred to its binding site. If a presuppositional anaphor cannot be bound, it will be accommodated at the highest possible level of discourse structure

6 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Presuppositional anaphora... This explains their tendency to take maximal scope with respect to embedding operators; their tendency to accommodate in the main context; the phenomenon that they may be bound/absorbed at subordinate levels (and thus not be visible as actual presuppositions)

7 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Accommodation Descriptions are generated in situ; projection assigns scope The king of France is not bald France has a king and he is not bald x bald(x) x KF(x) KF(x) bald(x) x[kf(x) bald(x)]

8 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Binding The presuppositional material is absorbed in the protasis If France has a king, the King of France is bald If France has a king, he is bald x KF(x) bald(y) y KF(y) x KF(x) bald(x) set y to x and transfer the descriptive material to the binding site

9 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Temporal information exhibits the same pattern Tense tends to outscope embedding operators: John did not come i.e. t[t < n come(j)] Whenever tenses are bound the temporal information is interpreted at the binding site. Floppy was always on the run i.e. t[t < n flop.run(t)]

10 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Partee 1973 Verb tenses behave like (bound) variables should be represented by the same mechanism as pronouns They may be linked to a given antecedent (1) a. Sheila had a nice party last Friday and Sam got drunk. b. When Susan walked in, Peter left. They may act as bound variables (2) a. If Susan comes in, John will leave immediately. b. John never talks when he is eating. [... ] it is the tense morpheme [... ] that is serving as the variable quantified over [... ] Partee 1973: 607

11 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Partee 1984 Partee 1984 retracts this claim... the proposal [... ] that past tenses be taken as directly analogous to pronouns, referring to the time specified by a preceding clause or adverb, is incompatible with the moving forward of time in sucessive event sentences (it would be as if pronouns referred to the father of the last mentioned individual) Partee 1984: [Partee (1973) can] in retrospect be seen to suffer from [the inadequacy]... that tenses themselves acted like pronouns and the consequent belief that they therefore had to correspond to explicit time variables in a logical representation Partee 1984: 275

12 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions In the current framework Sentences introduce eventualities and presuppose temporal information. The anaphoric variable of the temporal frame is bound to the location time of a given eventuality, or bound by a quantifier, or else (e.g. discourse initial) accommodated. The resolution is subject to the standard constraints of presupposition theory.

13 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions The simple case Linking to a location time (3) It rained at Christmas (It was Chrismas. It rained). s n t Christmas(t) s: rain s t t t < n set t to t n t Christmas(t) s: rain s t t < n t, the anaphoric variable of the temporal frame is bound to the location time t.

14 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Projection Temporal information tends to flow up (4) If Floppy escaped at Christmas, she will probably escape again at Easter. n, t Christmas(t) n, t e e: flop.esc e t t t < n blabla Christmas(t) t < n e e: flop.esc e t blabla set t to t and tranfer the temporal information to the binding site

15 Presuppositional anaphora Temporal anaphora Verb tenses as presuppositional expressions Trapping (5) Floppy will never escape. n NO t e e: flop.esc e t t n < t n t n < t NO t e e: flop.esc e t Note that the temporal information cannot be accommodated any higher without unbinding the anaphoric variable of the temporal frame

16 The problem The basic idea Resolution The standard view on again (6) At Christmas Floppy will be on the run again. Again contributes to (7) by inducing the presupposition that there was an event or temporal moment before Christmas at which Floppy was on the run. Its utterance says she will be on the run at Christmas.

17 The problem The basic idea Resolution The standard view... According to this view the sole contribution of again is presuppositional, the non-presuppositional remainder is independent of the presuppositional information (6) thus expressed a full-fledged proposition even if the presupposition fails. Both Kripke and Kamp objected to this view

18 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kripke Embedded occurrences (7) If Floppy will be on the run at Harry s birthday, she will be on the run again at Christmas. Kripke: the standard -presupposition is satisfied by the protasis (and thus neutralized) but there is still a substantial inference forthcoming: we infer that Harry s birthday is before Christmas. The observation is right. But how to account for it?

19 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kripke Embedded occurrences... Kripke: assign the presupposition that Harry s birthday is before Christmas to the consequent; This is deeply puzzling. Such a consequent presupposition plays havoc with compositionality it remains unclear how such a presupposition should make it to the main context to account for the intuitive inference.

20 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kripke... The phenomenon is general: e.g. verbs of transition (8) If Sam watches the opera, he will stop watching it when the Redskins game comes on. [... ] a presupposition attached to stop is that the Redskins game comes on during the opera but not at the very beginning of it. Kripke 2009: 376 We will see that there is no need to postulate such unconventional presuppositions; given a proper encoding of the presuppositional material the intuitive inferences are taken care of by the resolution mechanism.

21 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kamp Quantified structures (9) a. #Floppy will be on the run at Christmas, but she will never be on the run. b. Floppy will be on the run at Christmas, but she will never be on the run again Sentence (9a) is contradictory, but (9b) is fine. Yet the presupposition that Floppy was on the run before, is satisfied. Kamp: The temporal condition is part of the non-presuppositional content, only the eventuality is presupposed.

22 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kamp... Quantified structures Kamp s proposal breaks down in Kripke-environments. Expand!!

23 The problem The basic idea Resolution Preliminary conclusions The examples show that when processing temporal adverbs like again, aspectual verbs (begin, stop and continue the temporal and eventuality conditions cannot be encoded and resolved as one single entity. For Kripke s example shows that the temporal information may resolve to the main context, while the presupposed eventuality is bound at a subordinate level; while Kamp s example shows that the presupposed eventuality may be resolved to the main context, while the temporal condition is interpreted at a lower level.

24 The problem The basic idea Resolution Desiderata for a general account A general encoding of presuppositional/anaphoric expressions; these are the input for the construction algorithm; which results in underspecified structures; that should be (by a general algorithm) be resolved in context. The full mechanism yields the possible interpretations as testable data.

25 The problem The basic idea Resolution Our proposal Split the presuppositional contribution in two (interrelated) components: a descriptive condition encoding the eventuality a temporal anaphor encoding the condition of anteriority Cf. the treatment of too in Van der Sandt & Geurts (2001) and Geurts & Van der Sandt (2004)

26 The problem The basic idea Resolution Representation (10) (At Christmas) it rained again. n s s: rain s t t t < n s s : rain s t t t < t

27 The problem The basic idea Resolution cf. transition verbs (11) (At Christmas) it continued (stopped, started) raining. n e s e: s s s: rain s t t t < n s s : rain s t t t < t

28 The problem The basic idea Resolution transition verbs... The transition verb contributes by providing an eventuality stating that s and s abut (e : s s). Note the parallelism between the temporal/eventuality structure of the presuppositional pre-state and the non-presuppositional remainder and note that we structures for start and stop by negating the presuppositional pre- or the post-state.

29 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kripke s puzzle (12) If Floppy will be on the run at Harry s birthday, she will be on the run again at Christmas. n t t n < t, n < t harry s-birthday(t), christmas(t ) s s flop.run(s), s t flop.run(s ), s t s flop.run(s ), s t t t < t set t to t...

30 The problem The basic idea Resolution Resolution of the temporal element n t t n< t< t harry s-birthday(t), christmas(t ) s flop.run(s), s t s flop.run(s ), s t s flop.run(s ), s t Setting t to t and tranferring the temporal information to the binding site adds t < t to the main context, which accounts for Kripke s observation Harry s birthday (t) is before Christmas (t )

31 The problem The basic idea Resolution The eventuality resolved We now set s to s The presupposed eventuality is absorbed in the protasis of the conditional. n t t n< t< t harry s-birthday(t), christmas(t ), s flop.run(s), s t s flop.run(s ), s t The sole function of again is to locate the eventualities in the temporal structure.

32 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kamp s puzzle (13) a. #Floppy will be on the run at Christmas, but she will never be on the run. b. Floppy will be on the run at Christmas, but she will never be on the run again. Why does inserting again in (13b) resolve the contradiction?

33 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kamp s puzzle... n t s n < t, Christmas(t) flop.run(s), s t t NO t s flop.run(s ), s t s flop.run(s ), s t t t < t Set t to t (the location time of the earlier state)

34 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kamp s puzzle: resolution Trapping: the condition t < t cannot be entered at main level since this would leave t free in a condition This forces accommodation in the subordinate DRS. n t s n< t, Christmas(t) flop.run(s), s t t NO t< t t s flop.run(s ), s t s flop.run(s ), s t Set s to s

35 The problem The basic idea Resolution Kamp s puzzle: the resolved structure n t s n < t, Christmas(t) flop.run(s), s t t NO s t < t t flop.run(s ), s t i.e. Floppy will be on the run at Christmas and she will not be on the run at any future time after Christmas. Again thus only contributes to (13) by restricting the domain of the quantifier to moments after Christmas. Note that the structure without the temporal condition is contradictory.

36 The problem The basic idea Resolution Conclusions thus far Partee s 1973 claim that the tense morpheme should be treated as an anaphor on a par with pronouns can be maintained and even strenghtened The presupposition of again, verbs of transition etc. comes in two parts the first encoding a given eventuality the second is a hidden tense morpheme encoding the temporal anteriority of this eventuality These presuppositions may be resolved independent of one another to an incoming context This yields an simple solution for Kripke s and Kamp s puzzle.

37 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions Attitudinal transparency The presupposition of (14) may be read so as not to contribute anything to the beliefs ascribed to Larry. (14) Floppy was on the run at Christmas. Larry believes that she will be on the run again at his birthday. Two readings Transparent: Floppy was on the run at Christmas and Larry believes she will be on the run at his birthday. (Larry need not to believe that she was on the run at Christmas) Non-transparent: Larry believes that Floppy was on the run at Christmas and also that she will be on the run at his birthday.

38 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions Attitudinal transparency... Thus We need to encode the presupposition(s) of again in such a way that the inducing sentence expresses a full-fledged proposition. In other words: in such a way that the presupposition doesn t bind a variable in the non-presuppositional remainder.

39 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions cf. descriptions (15) The King of France is bald. bald(x) x King-of-France(x) Note: if the presupposition fails, the inducing sentence doesn t express a proposition.

40 Preliminary representation n t t s t< n, n< t christmas(t), larry s-birthday(t ) flop.run(s), s t believe L : s flop.run(s ), s t s flop.run(s ), s t t t < t Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions set t to t

41 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions After resolving t n t t s t< n, n< t christmas(t), larry s-birthday(t ) flop.run(s), s t believe L : s flop.run(s ), s t s flop.run(s ), s t resolve s...

42 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions Resolution by global binding n t t s t < n t < t christmas(t) l.birthday(t ) flop.run(s) s t believe L : s flop. run(s ) s t

43 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions Resolution by local accommodation n t t s t < n t < t christmas(t) l.birthday(t ) flop.run(s) s t believe L : s s flop.run(s ) s t flop.run(s ) s t

44 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions Syntactically inaccessible positions The presupposition of again may find an antecedent that is syntactically inaccessible. (16) Floppy may be on the run at Christmas, but she will never be on the run again. The presupposed eventuality of (16) is licensed by material in the scope of the modal operator.

45 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions Representation t christmas(t) s flop.run(s), s t s t NO t flop.run(s ), s t s flop.run(s ), s t t t < t set t to t and s to s

46 Attitudinal transparency Access to inaccessible positions Resolution the temporal structure is intecepted in the restrictor the eventuality is bound in the scope of the modal t christmas(t) s flop.run(s), s t t NO t< t t s flop.run(s ), s t