Florian Schwarz from the University of Pennsylvania (UMass 2009 PhD) will give a Department Colloquium on Friday, October 7th, at 3:30 PM and will also lead a joint session of the Semantics and Psycholinguistics Workshops on Thursday, October 6th, from 6:00 to 7:15 PM. Both events will take place in N400. Everyone is welcome. Here is a link to a folder with background readings and more information.

 One of the main questions discussed in the recent presupposition literature is whether we need to differentiate different sub-classes of triggers (or reconsider classifications of different aspects of meaning more broadly altogether). A number of theoretical proposals have been put fourth, most prominently a pragmatic reanalysis of certain triggers based on reasoning over alternatives, akin to implicatures (Simons 2001, Abusch 2010, Romoli 2014). Other proposals distinguish triggers based on their anaphoric properties or the way in which they contribute to their local context in embedded environments. An alternative view, advanced by Abrusan (2011, 2016), is that there is no one fundamental underlying difference between types of triggers, and that observed variations in their behavior can be accounted for on the basis of various orthogonal factors. In this talk, I present results from several series of experiments aiming to assess these different theoretical perspectives. First, I present comparisons between implicatures and so-called `soft’ triggers that pose a serious challenge to a variety of pragmatic approaches of the latter. Next, I turn to experimental studies directly comparing (allegedly) different types of triggers, which do provide evidence suggesting that inherently distinct trigger types need to be distinguished, rather than explaining all variation in independent terms. I conclude with a discussion of how well the remaining theoretical options for distinguishing triggers fit with the existing data, and point to future directions for further refining our theoretical understanding of differences between triggers.

Many current theoretical accounts of presupposition projection are crucially based on specific assumptions about how presuppositions are interpreted in incremental processing. However, little is known about the actual processing mechanisms involved in comprehending triggers in embedded environments. I discuss two experiments looking at presuppositions in disjunctions, using covered box picture selection tasks combined with visual world eye tracking. The results provide evidence for Rapid Incremental Presupposition Evaluation (RIPE). We will then discuss how this finding relates to theoretical options for capturing projection. Finally, we will consider other recent results on incrementality in processing presupposition projection and how they can be integrated into the larger emerging picture of the role of processing considerations in our understanding of presuppositional phenomena.