The existential/uniqueness presupposition of wh-complements projects from the answers

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

he projection pattern of the existential/uniqueness presupposition of a wh-complement varies depending on the predicate that embeds it. This variation poses problems for existing accounts that treat the presupposition as a seman-tic contribution of an operator merging with the wh-complement (Dayal, 1996) or of the embedding predicate (Uegaki, 2015). I propose that the problems can be solved if the existential/uniqueness presupposition is contributed by the propositions corresponding to the answers of the embedded question, under the Hamblin/Karttunen semantics for questions.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-41
JournalLinguistics and Philosophy
Volumen/a
Early online date8 Sept 2020
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 8 Sept 2020

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • questions
  • embedded questions
  • wh-complements
  • presupposition of questions
  • uniqueness presupposition

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