@article{chemla:2009:sym,
abstract = {The presupposition triggered by an expression E is generally satisfied by information that comes before rather than after E in the sentence or discourse. In Heim`s classic theory (1983), this left-right asymmetry is encoded in the lexical semantics of dynamic connectives and operators. But several recent analyses offer a more nuanced approach, in which presupposition satisfaction has two separate components: a general principle (which varies from theory to theory) specifies under what conditions a presupposition triggered by an expression E is satisfied; and an `incremental` component specifies that the principle must be checked on the basis of information that comes before E. Several researchers take this incremental component to be a processing bias, which can be overcome at some cost. If so, it should be possible, though costly, to satisfy presuppositions `symmetrically`, i.e. taking into account linguistic material that comes both before and after the presupposition trigger. We test this claim with experimental means. Using inferential (and to some extent acceptability) tasks involving `anaphoric` triggers, we show that in the propositional case symmetric readings are indeed possible (albeit degraded) in environments involving the connectives if, or and unless.},
author = {Emmanuel Chemla and Philippe Schlenker},
date-added = {2009-07-01 20:20:58 +0200},
date-modified = {2017-02-23 23:02:15 +0000},
doi = {10.1007/s11050-012-9080-7},
journal = {Natural Language Semantics},
keywords = {presupposition projection; symmetry; incremental; processing; experiment},
number = {2},
pages = {177-226},
title = {Incremental vs. Symmetric Accounts of Presupposition Projection: An Experimental Approach},
url = {http://www.emmanuel.chemla.free.fr/Material/Chemla-Schlenker-SymExp.pdf},
volume = {20},
year = {2012},
bdsk-url-1 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11050-012-9080-7}}