Definiciones y Conceptos:

I will argue that the only extant pragmatic account must endorse the view that the projection of presuppositions triggered by constituents in determiners’ restrictors depends on the type of determiner involved and the presence of the ‘there be’ construction, but that the data contradicts this view.

Magidor is the only current advocate of a pragmatic account. She claims that certain predicates arepresupposition triggers, insofar as they are associated with particular presup- positions in a number of settings. She considers apresuppositionto be information that must already be present in the common ground if the occurrence of the expression that triggers it is to be felicitous. While semantic notions of presuppositions (e.g. Asher (2011)) hold that presupposition failure leads to semantic undefinedness, Magidor’s notion holds that it simply causes meaningful, valued occurrences of sentences to elicit a sense of pragmatic infelicity in assessors. She argues that simple category mistake-exhibiting sentences are cases where a presupposition triggered by a predicate fails. Given that occurrences of non- category mistake-exhibiting sentences might also involve presupposition failure, an advo- cate of this position need not commit herself to Unique Defectivness; however, Magidor (2013) (pp.1-2) accepts Unique Defectiveness on the grounds that the sentences typically classified as category mistake-exhibiting ‘seem infelicitous in a similar manner ... [which] points to a linguistic phenomenon: the phenomenon of category mistakes’.

Magidor issues direct predictions regarding the propensity for certain simple sentences to elicit an oddness response. For instance, she states that occurrences of the predicate ‘red’ trigger the presupposition that the predicate’s argument’s extension consists of coloured items, whereas ordinary common grounds will include the information that the extension of ‘number’ does notconsist of coloured items, resulting in an oddness response. She re- lies on general facts about the projection of presuppositions from simpler to more complex constructions in order to predict the transmission of category mistake-exhibiting status to complex sentences. Therefore, her account’s predictions regarding whether occurrences of sentences such as (2a), (3a) and (4a) will elicit an oddness response can be established only on the basis of determining the general projection rules for presupposition triggers embed- ded in such sentences. Yet Magidor (2013) (p.122) concedes that quantification is an ‘area where the projection properties are still very much under debate’, with a discussion of the role of presuppositions in determiners’ restrictors’ being virtually absent from the literature. If general projection facts are to predict Definite Variance and ‘There’ Acceptability, then they must include the following three pieces of data. Supposepis a presupposition triggered by some constituent of the NP ‘N’. Then, firstly, pmust consistently arise for occurrences of ‘Det N beβ’ when ‘Det’ is a definite determiner. Secondly,p must sometimes arise and sometimes fail to arise for occurrences of ‘Det N beβ’ when ‘Det’ is an indefinite determiner. Thirdly, p should never arise for occurrences of ‘There be Det N β’. I will now consider sentences that include (possibly non-empty) restrictors containing presupposition triggers. I will argue that these sentences indicate that the general projection facts do not include the three pieces of data required to bestow descriptive adequacy on Magidor’s account.

I will assume that, in simple sentences, the NPs ‘king(s) who know(s) that Yasma is a mathematician’ and ‘king(s) who (is / are) (a) better mathematician(s) than Yasma’ trigger the presuppositionthat Yasma is a mathematician, and ‘king(s) who stopped talking to Yasma’ triggers the presuppositionthat the relevant kings have previously talked to Yasma. Now con- sider whether these presuppositions arise for occurrences of the following sentences:

5. (a) Every king who knows that Yasma is a mathematician lives in New York. (b) Every king who is a better mathematician than Yasma lives in New York.

6. (a) Some kings who know that Yasma is a mathematician live in New York. (b) Some kings who are better mathematicians than Yasma live in New York.

(c) Some kings who stopped talking to Yasma live in New York.

7. (a) There are some kings who know that Yasma is a mathematician living in New York.

(b) There are some kings who are better mathematicians than Yasma living in New York.

(c) There are some kings who stopped talking to Yasma living in New York.

It seems that (5a) – (7c) display a robust propensity to elicit the relevant presuppositions, with no discernible difference in this propensity between the three groups of sentences. This observation emerges fairly clearly from attempts at detecting the presence of a pre- supposition via introspection, in addition to receiving support from the standard tests for presupposition.5

An advocate of Magidor’s account might object that (5a) – (7c) entail the relevant propo- sitions in addition to presupposing them, and that this obscures attempts at determining whether the presuppositions persist in the various settings. In order to counter this ob- jection, we may consider variants of (5a) – (7c) where we replace ‘know(s)’, ‘(is / are) (a) better’ and ‘stopped’ with, respectively, ‘(doesn’t / don’t) know’, ‘(isn’t / aren’t) (a) better’ and ‘didn’t stop’. Standard accounts of presupposition projection predict that these negative variants will trigger the same presuppositions as (5a) – (7c), without entailing those presup- positions. Like (5a) – (7c), the negative variants appear to elicit the relevant presuppositions, with no discernible differences between the three groups of sentences, as evidenced by in- trospection and the standard tests for presupposition.6

Hence Magidor’s reliance on general projection facts yields the predictions that occur- rences of (2a), (3a) and (4a) will all generate an oddness response, since the presupposition associated with ‘red’ will project in each case. It follows that the only extant pragmatic account fails to predict Definite Variance and ‘There’ Acceptability.

Summary of §(5.1)

The current section observed that sentences that contain perceived necessarily empty re- strictors compose an important class of the sentences that have traditionally been thought to exhibit category mistakes. I claimed that the Definite Variance and ‘There’ Acceptabil- ity data that arises with respect to contingently empty restrictors also arises with respect to

5_{For example, the application of the cancellability test to each of the sentences suggests the presence of a}

non-cancellable presupposition; e.g. ‘Some kings who know that Yasma is a mathematician live in New York ... not that Yasma is a mathematician’ sounds infelicitous. Similarly, the application of the ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ test to each of the sentences indicates the potential to interrupt the conversation to query the putative presup- position; e.g. (6a) may reasonably be followed up with: ‘Hey, wait a minute! I had no idea that Yasma was a mathematician’.

6_{For example, the application of the cancellability and ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ tests to the negative variants}

support the presence of presuppositions; e.g. ‘Some kings who don’t know that Yasma is a mathematician live in New York’ cannot be felicitously followed up with ‘... not that Yasma is a mathematician’, whereas it may be reasonably followed up with ‘Hey, wait a minute! I had no idea that Yasma was a mathematician’.

necessarily empty ones. I argued that the specific accounts of category mistakes considered, in addition to syntactic accounts and semantic accounts in general, fail to generate correct predictions about the transmission of the oddness response. Here is the first conclusion to be drawn, then:all extant accounts of category mistakes are descriptively inadequate.