Let us briefly recall what are the main data concerning the linguistic behaviour ofknow,surprise andrealisethat we want to account for with our account. Factivity and veridicality. Know, surprise and realise are factive verbs, which means that when they embed a declarative complementP the resulting sentence presupposes the truth ofP:
(80) a. John knows that Bob called. Bob called.
b. John doesn’t know that Bob called. Bob called.
(81) a. It surprised Kate that Bob came to the party. Bob came.
b. It didn’t surprise Kate that Bob came to the party. Bob came.
(82) a. Kate realised that Bob is a bad guy. Bob is a bad guy.
b. Kate didn’t realise that Bob is a bad guy. Bob is a bad guy.
Moreover, we have observed thatknow, surprise and realise are also veridical with respect to their interrogative complements. This means that if a verb V embeds an interrogative complement Q, then the resulting sentence XV Q entails the truth of a sentence of the form XV P where P is (some kind of) a true answer toQ:
(83) John knows who called yesterday. Ann and Bob called.
Therefore, John knows that Ann and Bob called. (84) It surprised John who called yesterday.
Only Bob called.
(85) Kate realised who came to the party. Only Ann came.
Therefore, Kate realised that Ann came.
Different readings. As shown in the first chapter there is no general agree- ment in the literature concerning which readings are exactly at play with which embedding verbs. Some authors claim that know always selects for a strongly exhaustive reading and surprise and realise for a mention-some reading (e.g. George, 2011); other authors argue thatsurprise andrealiseselect for a weakly exhaustive reading instead, which is sometimes also available for know (e.g. Guerzoni and Sharvit, 2007).
The debate is ongoing and certainly interesting. However, it does not fall within the scope of this work to conclusively evaluate the different positions at play, nor to argue for a particular position, as we believe that only systematic data-oriented studies could shed further light on these issues.
As already pointed out, in this work we are mostly concerned with the fact that verbs such assurpriseandrealise fail to embedwhether-complements and our account is especially aimed to give an explanation of this fact. As the reader will see, in formulating our semantic entries forknow, surprise and realise, we will make the simplifying assumption thatknow always selects for the strongly exhaustive reading whilesurprise and realise always select for the weakly ex- haustive reading. However, we want to stress that this choice is not intended to signal our preference with one particular position in the debate: as we will show, our account of thewhether-puzzle is compatible with other choices as well.33 Existence presupposition. In the first chapter we took the following exam- ples as evidence that sentences wheresurprise or realise embed a wh-question carry an existence presupposition, in the sense that there must be a positive (weakly exhaustive) answer to the embedded question in order for the sentences to be evaluable at all.
(86) a. Mary: It surprised John who failed the test.
b. Lucy: Hey, wait a minute! I didn’t know that someone failed at all.34
(87) a. It surprised John who failed the test. Someone failed.
b. It did not surprise John who failed the test. Someone failed.
c. Did it surprise John who failed the test? Someone failed.
(88) a. Mary: Kate realised who failed the test.
33In particular, the flexibility thatInqH
B inherits fromInqB will allow us to derive also the
mention-some reading of questions embedded underknow,supriseandrealise. 34Cfr. (von Fintel, 2004).
b. Lucy: Hey, wait a minute! I didn’t know that someone failed at all. (89) a. Kate realised who failed the test.
Someone failed.
b. Kate didn’t realise who failed the test. Someone failed.
c. Did Kate realise who failed the test? Someone failed.
As we will see, our semantic entries forsurpriseandrealisewill account for these observations by requiring that the abstracts associated with the embedded ques- tions are satisfiable in the world of evaluation, i.e. that for each abstract there is at least one individual in the domain such that the abstract yields a true proposition when applied to that individual.
The whether-puzzle. Finally, we want to account for the well-known puz- zling observation that surprise and realise do not behave as other responsive verbs in that they cannot felicitously embedwhether-complements (while being able to embedwh-complements):
(90) It surprised John who called.
(91) # It surprised John whether Bob called (, or Ann). (92) Kate realised who came to the party.
(93) # Kate realised whether Bob came to the party (, or Ann).
Our account of these observations crucially relies on the interplay between the presuppositional component of the meaning associated with the embedding verbs and the set of items highlighted by the embedded complements. The basic idea is that in the case ofwhether-complements embedded undersurprise andrealisethis interplay would give rise to constructions that are semantically useless, and thus not realised in English. In order to be able to dive into the details of this account we first need to introduce embedding verbs and their semantics.