Talk by David Beaver
Local Satisfaction Preferred
It is shown how the Stalnaker / Karttunen / Heim Context Change account of
Presupposition (CCP), in which presupposition is accounted for in terms of a dynamic
semantics, may be combined with a cancellationist account in which presuppositions are
defeasible. One way of viewing the result is as an implementation of local
accommodation. In essence, CCP says that meanings map an inoput state to an outpuit,
and that presuppositions are necessary conditions on the (local) input context. The new
combined LSP model makes presuppositions instead into *preferences* on the input,
which can be overridden in the face of contradiction. It has been
argued that this is much more interesting than compositionality.
Paul Dekker, November 2, 1995