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    Pronouns are a special subclass of presuppositional expre... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Pronouns are a special subclass of presuppositional expressions that almost always must be bound rather than accommodated.

    Philosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.All presupposition triggers prefer to be bound to an already-available discourse referent.
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    • 2.Pronouns are descriptively attenuated and therefore cannot be construed via accommodation.
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    • 3.Because accommodation is unavailable to pronouns, binding is the only viable resolution strategy for pronouns.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Discourse-new pronouns in 'bridging' and 'lazy' anaphora cases (Karttunen 1969, van der Sandt 1992) demonstrate accommodation without prior explicit antecedents.
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    • 2.If accommodation were categorically unavailable to pronouns, deictic and recognitional uses of 'he' or 'she' in out-of-the-blue contexts would be systematically uninterpretable, yet they are not.
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    • 3.The binding-only thesis conflates the preference for bound readings with a categorical constraint, obscuring the gradient nature of accommodation costs across presupposition types.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Postal (1966) and Jackendoff (1972) established that pronouns carry descriptive content via phi-features (gender, number, animacy), supplying sufficient material for accommodation of a novel discourse referent.
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    • 2.Van der Sandt's (1992) binding-as-anaphora theory treats accommodation as a last resort on a preference hierarchy, not a logical impossibility, contradicting the claim that accommodation is unavailable rather than merely dispreferred for pronouns.
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    Philosophy of Language

    Related

    All presupposition triggers prefer to be bound to an already-available discourse...Because accommodation is unavailable to pronouns, binding is the only viable res...Discourse-new pronouns in 'bridging' and 'lazy' anaphora cases (Karttunen 1969, ...If accommodation were categorically unavailable to pronouns, deictic and recogni...
    +4 moreShow less
    Postal (1966) and Jackendoff (1972) established that pronouns carry descriptive ...Pronouns are descriptively attenuated and therefore cannot be construed via acco...The binding-only thesis conflates the preference for bound readings with a categ...Van der Sandt's (1992) binding-as-anaphora theory treats accommodation as a last...

    Similar

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: discourse-representation-theory
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    The binding theory incorporates the notion of accommodation as follows. Presuppositions, according to the theory, introduce information that prefers to be linked to discourse referents that are already available in the DRS, and in this respect they are like pronouns. However, if a suitable discourse referent is not available, a new one will be accommodated, and the presupposition is linked to that. Generally speaking, accommodation is not an option in the interpretation of pronouns, and a possi
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit