Proceedings of SALT
2010
APA
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Simons, M., Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D. I., & Roberts, C. (2010). What projects and why.
Chicago/Turabian
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Simons, Mandy, Judith Tonhauser, David I. Beaver, and Craige Roberts. “What Projects and Why” (2010).
MLA
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Simons, Mandy, et al. What Projects and Why. 2010.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{mandy2010a,
title = {What projects and why},
year = {2010},
author = {Simons, Mandy and Tonhauser, Judith and Beaver, David I. and Roberts, Craige}
}
Projection is widely used as a diagnostic for presupposition, but many expression types yield projection even though they do not have standard properties of presupposition, for example, appositives, expressives, and honorifics (Potts 2005). While it is possible to analyze projection piecemeal, clearly a unitary explanation is to be preferred. Yet we show that standard explanations of projective behavior (common ground based theories, anaphoric theories, and multi-dimensional theories) do not extend to the full range of triggers. Instead, we propose an alternative explanation based on the following claim: Meanings project iff they are not at-issue, where at-issueness is defined in terms of the Roberts' (1995) discourse theory. Thus, and despite their apparent heterogeneity, projective meaning triggers emerge as a natural class on the basis of the not-at-issue status of their projective inference.