Browsing by Subject "Presupposition"
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Item Information structure and mood selection in Spanish complement clauses(2010-12) Lascurain, Paxti; Koike, Dale April; Luj�n, Marta; Mej�as-Bikandi, Errapel; Salaberry, Rafael; Nishida, ChiyoThe general goal of this dissertation is to highlight the role of discourse pragmatics in the explanation of the use of the indicative and subjunctive moods in Spanish sentential complements. This dissertation examines mood selection in Spanish complements in order to illustrate the shortcomings of the traditional semantic/syntactic approach (Terrell & Hooper (1974), Hooper (1975), P. Klein (1974), Fukushima (1978-79), Bell (1980), and Takagaki (1984)) and to provide within the Information Structure framework (Lambrecht 1994; 2001) a detailed analysis of mood selection in Spanish complement clauses. Considering some existing pragmatic approaches to Spanish mood selection (e.g., Lavandera 1983, Guitart 1991, Mejías-Bikandi 1994, 1998), they are found to be inadequate because they are based on decontextualized sentences. This dissertation considers the context where sentences take place and contributes to our understanding of mood selection in Spanish complements as a formal reflection of the pragmatic properties and relations of the discourse referents that are denoted by noun complements, considering pragmatic notions of presupposition and assertion of propositional referents, their activation, and the pragmatic relations of topic/focus of these referents in the utterances. The notion of pragmatic assertion used in this dissertation is based on the notion of speaker intent, and it is equated with the notion of inactive discourse referents, which are in turn linked to the use of indicative mood in complements of assertive matrices. The notion of pragmatic presupposition is equated with the notion of active referents in the discourse, which are in turn linked to the use of subjunctive mood in complements of doubt/negation and comment matrices. However, this thesis argues that not all uses of subjunctive are motivated by the active status of propositional referents. Volitional and possibility uses of subjunctive are analyzed, similarly to assertive matrices, as activating a discourse referent. Yet, contrary to assertive matrices, and following Fauconnier’s (1985) theory of mental spaces, the referent activated belongs to the domain that represents an individual’s view of reality. This account of mood distribution in complement clauses is eventually extended to adjectival and adverbial subordinates and provides an explanation of mood distribution in all subordinate contexts in Spanish.Item Korean evidentials in discourse(2012-05) Kim, Jinung; Asher, Nicholas; Beaver, David; Lee, Sun-Hee; Ogihara, Toshiyuki; Wechsler, StephenThe purpose of this dissertation is a study of Korean evidentiality on the basis of presuppositional analysis. My claim is that Korean evidentiality can be accounted for under the binding theory of presupposition (Asher & Lascarides 1998; 2003; Asher 2000). The proposal I motivate in this dissertation is that interpretations of Korean evidentials can be handled using the same mechanism which resolves anaphoric expressions.Dynamic Semantics such as DRT and SDRT give a contribution to account for phenomena like anaphora bridging, presupposition, and accomodation bythe update procedure of the discourse structure. I investigate Korean evidentials by examining their distributions and functions in Korean grammar and specifying the types of information source in Korean evidential system. In particular,there are three evidential types in Korean: Direct te, Reportative tay, Inference ci. I propose that the Korean evidential system corresponds to B-1 system in Aikhenvald (2004). I also give an analysis of the intonation phrase of utterances featuring Korean evidentials with the autosegmental-metrical model of intonational phonology. Moreover, I argue that Korean evidentials are presupposition triggers. To verify my claim, I provide various tests such as negation, challengeability and the interrogative flip. All the tests support for classifying Korean evidentials as one category. I also review and compare three different theoretical frameworks: modal, illocutionary and presuppositional analysis. I reject a modal analysis and an illocutionary analysis and employ a presuppositional analysis for Korean evidentiality.I propose that Korean evidentiality can be explained in terms of SDRT(Asher & Lascarides 1998; 2003). Asher & Lascarides (1998) regard presupposition resolution as an integrated part of the task of building discourse relations. I also show that the speaker-dependency of evidentiality is explicitly associated with characteristics of indexicals. Just as in the line of work stemming from Hunter & Asher (2005), I demonstrated that Korean evidentials are anaphorically resolved by the extra-linguistic context as well as by the linguistic context.Item Presuppositional indexicals(2010-12) Hunter, Julie Joanna; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark); Beaver, David I., 1966-; Buchanan, Lawrence Ray; Dever, Josh; Bonevac, Daniel; Kamp, Hans; Recanati, FrancoisI present and defend an account of indexicals that treats indexicals as presuppositional expressions. I argue that the distinction between presupposed and asserted content can replace the more restrictive distinction between character and content that is characteristic of Kaplanian, two-dimensional views. My account, "Presuppositional Indexicals" (PI), is simpler than a two-dimensional account because it does not posit a special layer of meaning for indexicals that cannot interact with truth-conditional content. PI also has broader scope than two-dimensional theories. It opens the door to a general theory of definite noun phrases according to which all definites have two components to their meaning: an asserted component, which contributes new information to a discourse, and a presuppositional component, which determines where asserted information will be attached in a discourse. PI does not stipulate rigidity or referentiality for indexicals as many other theories do. Indexicals do receive a special semantic treatment in PI, but their special semantics are captured entirely in terms of a strategy that indexicals exhibit for the resolution of their presuppositions.