Institut Jean Nicod

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Marta Abrusan (CNRS)

Vendredi 16 décembre 2016 de 11h30 à 13h

Institut Jean-Nicod, Pavillon Jardin, ENS, 29, rue d'Ulm 75005. Salle de réunion, RDC

Marta Abrusan (CNRS, IRIT)

"Perspective Shift and Presuppositions in Attitude Contexts"

Abstract:
This talk is concerned with perspective shift in natural language, in particular protagonist projection (cf. Holton 1997, Stokke 2013). I argue that a pragmatic process of protagonist projection helps to explain the behaviour of presuppositions embedded in attitude contexts. The argument is based on examples that show that implications about the beliefs of the subject of the attitude do not follow automatically from the semantics of attitude verbs but need to be supported by the context. In particular, the mental state of the attitude holder has to be independently salient in order to allow internal accommodation of presuppositions. To explain this, I propose that the set of beliefs of the attitude holder is made accessible pragmatically, via protagonist projection. This type of perspective shift, however, can only happen when the attitude report is based on direct and reliable evidence instead of mere attribution.


CNRS EHESS ENS ENS