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In either case, to accept the sentence as true means to accept the description as "true," that is, satisfiable. The negation does not affect the existence, because the description presents the referent as someone about whom there will be a major predication, whether or not this predication has a not in it. This "cooperative work" is carried out by both interlocutors. When reference seems problematic or difficult, there is a negotiation process between Speaker and Addressee to adapt in a contextual way the properties which must be attributed to individuals of the cotextual world to whom the Speaker refers. |
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Consider, for example, the following dialogue: |
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(48) A: John wasn't at home, so I left the letter with his wife. |
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B: But John is not married! |
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A: Then she must have been a friend of his. I don't know John very well, and I don't know anything about his personal life. |
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From this perspective, we can also examine the particular case of existential presupposition negation. |
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Kempson (1975) considers sentences such as |
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(49) My husband didn't come to visit me. I'm not married. |
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(50) No, the neighbors didn't break it. We haven't any neighbors. |
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She argues that they do not have any existential presupposition, since it is possible to deny it. As we observed for the p-terms, what is not considered in this argument is that these texts can occur only in contexts in which another speaker mentioned before, in some previous sequence of the dialogue, the existence of a husband or of neighbors. Only in such a context is it possible to utter (49) or (50). |
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In this case the first part of these sentences |
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(49a) My husband didn't come to visit me. |
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(50a) No, the neighbors didn't break it. |
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is an anaphoric quotation of a preceding sentence of the dialogue, and the complete texts (49) and (50) are only corrections redefining the properties which should be attributed to the individuals in a given world contextually defined. This view is also evident in Kempson's analysis of (51) when examples of textual insertion for (49) and (50) are given. |
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