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Xs Cause (Xd Change to (Alive Xd)) + (Animate Xd) |
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Further improvements can lead a representation such as this to record the difference between "kill" and "assassinate" by introducing an ideal felicity condition which establishes the political role of Xd. |
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Presupposition has been considered for a long time a phenomenon that cannot be taken into account by a meaning representation. Fillmore (1971) has showed how it is possible to record the presupposition within the semantic representation of the verbs of judging. In Eco and Violi 1987 (included here as chapter 14, "Presuppositions"), we distinguish between three sorts of presuppositions: existential, co-textual, and presuppositions of p-terms. |
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As for existential presuppositions, it seems preposterous to maintain that |
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(7) I met the son of Mary |
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"presupposes" that in some possible world there is a person called Mary and that this person has a son. So-called existential presuppositions have nothing to do with systems of signification. They have certainly to do with processes of communication and can be considered by a semantics of reference or mention, insofar as they implicitly assert that something is the case,. On the grounds of the conversational assumption that speakers, if speaking, engage themselves to tell the truth or at least to speak about something (be it a thing, a figment, or a thought), the sentence (7) posits the actual existence of Mary and her son in some possible world, and the hearer is engaged to take their existence for granted until the moment it can be proved that the speaker was speaking infelicitously (to use an understatement). In fact, it is highly improbable that one reacts to (7) with (8) or (9) |
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(8) But Mary does not exist! |
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(9) You did not meet anybody because Mary has no sons! |
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and it is more probable that one reacts with (10) or (11) |
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(11) You should have met somebody else. Mary has no sons. |
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