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(51) S: Did the neighbors break the window?
A: No, it wasn't the fault of the neighbors. We haven't got any neighbors.
Neither (49) or (50) is autocontradictory, nor does either give evidence against existential presupposition, because both challenge the assumption of another speaker, repeating his words and showing that these words are inappropriate in the given context.
We said before that the success of the act of reference is the result of a textual cooperation process in which both participants are involved. This element of negotiation can explain some differences in the level of pragmatic acceptability for different kinds of definite descriptions and proper names. Consider, for example,
(52) I would like to reserve two places for me and my husband.
(53) Now I have to bring my son to the doctor.
(54) I would like to reserve two places for me and John.
(55) Now I have to bring Bob to the doctor.
Let's consider the dialogic context in which participants do not share common knowledge. In this case, (52) and (53) are more appropriate than (54) and (55). But this difference is not connected with a problem of presupposition failure. In fact, all the considered expressions have the same positional power and pose the existence of the named individuals.
What makes sentences (52) and (53) more appropriate is the appropriateness of the reference act. At first glance the difference seems to be between definite descriptions and proper names. In fact, the different appropriateness depends on the information which is conveyed to the Addressee.
In (52) and (53) the individual denoted by the definite description can immediately be integrated with the Addressee's previous knowledge, via an easily activated mental schema (that is, "family schema," which provides for both husbands and sons). This is not the case in (54) and (55). This appropriateness depends, of course, on the previous shared knowledge: in a conversation which takes place between two old friends, (55) is perfectly acceptable and, in fact, may be preferable to (53).
The different degrees of appropriateness are definable according to a pragmatic scale of how difficult, in a given context, the identification of

 
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