160039 SE Seminar aus Semantik (2012S)

This class will be concerned with two types of linguistic phenomena,
vagueness and presuppositions, which have motivated the use of
trivalent semantics, i.e. semantics in which a sentence's truth value
can be either `true', `false' or `undefined'. For both presuppositions
and vagueness, a major issue is the so-called projection problem: in
the case of presuppositions, the problem of predicting the
presuppositions of complex sentences on the basis of the
presuppositions of their elementary parts, and, in the case of
vaguness, the problem of predicting the 'clarity conditions' of
complex sentences in terms of the clarity conditions of their
elementary parts. Different trivalent systems provide different
solutions to this projection problem, and one can wonder whether the
same underlying system is at work for both presuppositions and
vagueness. We will survey a number of approaches to presuppositions
(both trivalent and non-trivalent - dynamic semantics, Schlenker's
transparency theory, and variations on Strong Klenne/Supervalutionist
approaches), and assess their empirical validity, specifically for
quantified environments - partly in relation with experimental
results. We will also discuss the extent to which the projection
properties of presuppositions and vagueness are similar, with a
particular focus on gradable adjectives and so-called `homogeneity
presuppositions' -- which we will argue should in fact be viewed as a
special case of vagueness