Raj Singh | Carleton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Raj Singh

Heim's (1991) Maximize Presupposition! (henceforth MP) states, roughly, that given two contex... more Heim's (1991) Maximize Presupposition! (henceforth MP) states, roughly, that given two contextually equivalent alternatives, speakers must use that alternative whose presuppositions are stronger and happen to be met in the context of use. Given our common knowledge that there is exactly one sun, for example, the principle accounts for why # A sun is shining is such an odd sentence; the speaker should have used The sun is shining instead. The principle is technically sound, and fully predictive. The puzzle facing us is a conceptual one: why should language use be constrained by such a principle? The goal of this paper is to explore the extent to which MP might be reduced to more general principles. More specifically, my goal is to explore the extent to which MP might be reducible to the theory of scalar implicature. Heim (1991) suggested a way to derive MP effects from implicature reasoning, but concluded that the contextdependence of this reasoning prevented the reduction from s...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Cognitive science, Jan 8, 2015

According to one view of linguistic information (Karttunen, 1974; Stalnaker, 1974), a speaker can... more According to one view of linguistic information (Karttunen, 1974; Stalnaker, 1974), a speaker can convey contextually new information in one of two ways: (a) by asserting the content as new information; or (b) by presupposing the content as given information which would then have to be accommodated. This distinction predicts that it is conversationally more appropriate to assert implausible information rather than presuppose it (e.g., von Fintel, 2008; Heim, 1992; Stalnaker, 2002). A second view rejects the assumption that presuppositions are accommodated; instead, presuppositions are assimilated into asserted content and both are correspondingly open to challenge (e.g., Gazdar, 1979; van der Sandt, 1992). Under this view, we should not expect to find a difference in conversational appropriateness between asserting implausible information and presupposing it. To distinguish between these two views of linguistic information, we performed two self-paced reading experiments with an on-...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact