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A note on presupposition accommodation

Paper · 2013 · Roni Katzir and Raj Singh

Summary

The paper looks at the proviso problem in satisfaction theories of presupposition. In these theories, sentences such as conditionals project only a weakened presupposition (ψ → p0), yet hearers often still infer the stronger p0. Mismatch-based satisfaction theories explain p0 as accommodation that happens only when the context fails to entail the projected presupposition. Heim's texts, where an earlier sentence satisfies the presupposition and p0 disappears, seem to support this. Geurts's examples, where p0 survives even though the presupposition is tautological, seem to refute it.

Katzir and Singh argue that both arguments are confounded:

  • In Heim's texts, the first sentence creates an ignorance inference, and that inference alone would block p0.
  • In Geurts's examples, following van Rooij, the implicit question under discussion already presupposes p0.

The authors build detailed scenarios that control for both factors and try to elicit judgments. The scenarios proved too complex to yield an interpretable pattern. Their conclusion is that such data cannot currently settle the debate, and that designing clean test items is itself a methodological challenge.

Key points

  • The paper contrasts two views of accommodation within satisfaction theories:
    • Mismatch-based: p0 arises only when Context Satisfaction is violated.
    • Speaker-based: the hearer reasons about what the speaker presupposes.
  • Restricting accommodation to mismatches explains a known pattern in "John's sister is a concert pianist". Only the presupposition (John has a sister) survives embedding and the "Hey, wait a minute!" test. Ordinary entailments and suggestions do neither.
  • Confound 1: an earlier conditional making Lyle's having a sister depend on his flying to Toronto signals speaker ignorance about p0, which blocks accommodating p0 independently of satisfaction.
  • Confound 2: Geurts's examples (all the boys failed; the janitor not noticing Fred left) carry a question under discussion that already presupposes p0.
  • The controlled scenarios (Lyle's possible drinking problem; boys shouting at school) were tested on about 30 English-speaking undergraduates. No interpretable pattern emerged, and some readers admitted ignoring parts of the context.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. An inference that seems driven by one mechanism (context mismatch) may actually come from another (an ignorance implicature or the implicit question), so each confound must be isolated before crediting a theory.
  • I2. Presuppositions can be told apart from entailments and mere suggestions by checking survival under embedding (e.g. "it is likely that …") and challengeability via "Hey, wait a minute!"
  • I3. Accommodation can be modelled as repairing the context by adding information, either minimally (just p) or more strongly (p0 as well), with the choice constrained by what the context already entails.
  • I4. A speaker who just expressed uncertainty about something should not be read as presupposing it later.
  • I5. The question under discussion can itself carry presuppositions that leak into how an answer is read.

For Mova

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

  • I1 (learn): Evaluation suites for presupposition and implicature handling should include paired items where only one suspected cause varies, acting as negative controls against spurious explanations.
  • I2 (frames): crate prag could tag candidate inferences with these diagnostic properties, so the system can explain why a claim was treated as presupposed rather than asserted.
  • I3 (world): when a text presupposes something absent from the world of the text, Mova could add a flagged, retractable assumption and record whether it chose the weak or the strong version.
  • I4 (world): track speaker ignorance states per entity or proposition, and block accommodation of facts the same speaker has marked as uncertain.
  • I5 (answer): QA readers on fables and tests should separate what the question presupposes from what the text supports, to avoid accepting a premise smuggled in by the question.

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

🎓Tel Aviv UniversityTel Aviv · Israel67 works · 10,006 citations🎓Carleton UniversityOttawa · Canada2 works · 147 citations

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Computer Science · 9,085 worksArtificial Intelligence · 8,888 worksArts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 worksPhilosophy · 211 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.Implicature · 72 works

Cite

Cite as Roni Katzir and Raj Singh. 2013. A note on presupposition accommodation. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.3765/sp.6.5

@article{katzir2013note,
  title = {{A note on presupposition accommodation}},
  author = {Roni Katzir and Raj Singh},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.6.5},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.6.5}
}

References

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