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Presupposition projection as a scope phenomenon

Paper · 2022 · Julian Grove

Summary

Heim's satisfaction theory of presupposition projection has faced the "proviso problem" since Geurts 1996. In a sentence like "If Theo has a brother, he'll bring his wetsuit," the theory predicts only a conditional presupposition (a wetsuit if he has a brother). Speakers, however, hear an unconditional one (Theo has a wetsuit). Grove argues that this failure comes from how composition is set up, not from the satisfaction approach itself. He keeps Heim's core ideas: contexts are sets of worlds, and presuppositions are definedness conditions, with undefinedness treated as a real semantic value. He then replaces plain function application with a monadic composition scheme that allows scope-taking, building on Charlow's exceptional-scope machinery. A presupposition trigger can then take scope over a potential filter, such as a conditional antecedent or an attitude verb, and have its definedness checked in that higher environment. Sentences like the wetsuit example become scope-ambiguous, and context selects the reading. This rescues the compositional satisfaction program without discarding earlier lexical analyses.

Key points

  • Target problem: the proviso problem, which Geurts 1996 raised against Heim 1983. The paper generalizes it as the problem of "trapped presupposition triggers," meaning triggers that end up filtered when they should not be.
  • Accommodation Principle (Heim 1983): a sentence presupposes whatever every context admitting it entails. For example, under this principle "φ and ψ" presupposes r ∧ (φ → s).
  • Mechanism:
    • Presupposition failure is represented as a dedicated undefined value (#).
    • Composition uses monadic operators η and ⋆.
    • Exceptional scope, in the style of Charlow 2020a,b, combines with roll-up pied-piping.
  • Conditionals: the scope account handles both "If Theo has a brother…" (trigger scopes out, unconditional presupposition) and "If Theo is a scuba diver…" (trigger stays in the consequent, weaker conditional presupposition).
  • Attitude and other cases:
    • With believe and hope, a trigger can be evaluated globally while the at-issue content reconstructs under the verb. The sentence then presupposes nothing about Theo's beliefs.
    • also turns a whole complement of think into a trigger.
  • Portability and code: the system can be restated with Heim/Rothschild-style context change potentials, functions from sets of indices to sets of indices. Accompanying Haskell code exists.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Treat projection as a scope ambiguity: a trigger can be resolved locally or above an operator, and context chooses between the readings instead of a fixed filtering rule.
  • I2. Make failure a first-class value: undefinedness (#) is an ordinary result that propagates through composition, much like a trivalent logic.
  • I3. Split the at-issue part from the presupposition: the asserted content can stay under believe while the presupposition is checked at the top level.
  • I4. Pick the upgrade that keeps old lexical entries valid: the monadic layer is backwards compatible, so ordinary function-application meanings still work and scope is an added option.
  • I5. Use family-of-sentences diagnostics: check whether an inference survives embedding under negation, conditionals or questions to tell presuppositions apart from entailments.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (frames): in prag, a presupposition trigger (definite, also, possessive) inside a conditional or attitude clause could emit two candidate attachment sites, each logged, so later stages pick one explainably.
  • I2 (world): when a definite like "his wetsuit" has no referent in the text world, record an explicit "presupposition unmet" state instead of silently creating or dropping the entity; readers can then answer "the text doesn't say."
  • I3 (world): store the existence of Theo's wetsuit as a fact of the text world, and store "lost it" only inside Theo's belief sub-world, keeping the two layers distinct in the entity/state model.
  • I4 (frames): new scope or presupposition handling could wrap existing VerbNet-based frame builders through a uniform lift/bind interface rather than rewriting each verb entry.
  • I5 (learn): build evaluation pairs by embedding training sentences under "if", "not" and "does … ?". A presupposition that disappears in all of them works as a negative control for the trigger detector.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓University of GothenburgGothenburg · Sweden34 works · 1,625 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Computer Science · 18,614 worksArtificial Intelligence · 17,965 worksArts and Humanities · 17,450 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 17,296 worksPhilosophy · 287 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.Implicature · 138 works

Cite

Cite as Julian Grove. 2022. Presupposition projection as a scope phenomenon. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.3765/sp.15.15

@article{grove2022presupposition,
  title = {{Presupposition projection as a scope phenomenon}},
  author = {Julian Grove},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.15.15},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.15}
}

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