Abstract
The sentences that contain empty definite descriptions are sometimes perceived to be truth-valueless and sometimes perceived to be false. Strawson offered an account of this phenomenon. However, his proposal is empirically inadequate, as shown by von Fintel. von Fintel proposes an alternative account based on a mechanism of belief revision. In this paper, I argue that sentences with multiple failing presuppositions pose a problem for von Fintel’s account. Furthermore, I discuss two variants of von Fintel’s theory proposed by Elbourne to see whether they fare any better than the original. The second variant yields an incorrect prediction for the cases at hand. However, the first variant can account for the problematic examples if the false presuppositions are processed in turn. I will propose a revision of this variant that enforces distinct applications of the mechanism for each presupposition.
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Notes
In “On the Squeamishness of the Royal Kind” (2010), Christian and Cornelia Ebert criticize von Fintel’s account. They claim that, while von Fintel’s procedure makes correct predictions for empty definite descriptions that are not in topic, it does not adequately handle empty definite descriptions that are in topic. My claim is that von Fintel’s account also runs into trouble with empty definite descriptions that are not in topic. Hence, my critique of von Fintel’s proposal is independent of Ebert and Ebert’s.
References
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Acknowledgments
An immense thank goes to Sandro Zucchi for teaching me almost everything I know and for his invaluable help with this paper, both in encouraging me writing it and in preciously commenting previous drafts throughout the long process this paper went through. I also want to thank Josep Macià, who suggested me von Fintel’s paper, whose reading was essential to this article; Paul Elbourne for his deep comments on a previous version of this work; and Massimiliano Vignolo for helping me focus on the strongest arguments. Last but not least, I acknowledge that the comments by referees of ESSLLI 2015, Semantics & Pragmatics, on previous versions of this work, and TOPOI, on the current version, allowed me to improve my paper greatly.
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Rosola, M. Who’s Sitting in That Chair? Multiple Failing Presuppositions and Truth-Value Judgments. Topoi 40, 117–129 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09700-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09700-7