Journal of Semantics Advance Access originally published online on July 2, 2007
Journal of Semantics 2007 24(3):289-304; doi:10.1093/jos/ffm007
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Strengthening Conditional Presuppositions
ILLC/University of Amsterdam
Correspondence: ILLC/University of Amsterdam The Netherlands e-mail: r.a.m.vanrooij{at}uva.nl
| Abstract |
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In this paper it will be shown how conditional presuppositions can be strengthened to unconditional ones if we assume that the antecedent and consequent of a conditional presupposition are independent of one another. Our notion of independence is very weak, and based on Lewis' (1988) notion of orthogonality of questions. It will be argued that our way of strengthening these presuppositions does not give rise to some wrong predictions Geurts (1996) argued other proposed strengthening accounts do.
Received for publication 7 December 2006. Revision received 5 April 2007. Accepted for publication 6 April 2007.