Mental States and Presuppositions. An Experimental Approach

  • Filippo Domaneschi
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition book series (PSPLC)

Abstract

As claimed in Chap.  2, according to the common ground account proposed by Stalnaker, the common ground of presuppositions in a conversation coincides with the cognitive context of the speakers’ background of mental states. According to an update version of the common ground account, speakers involved in a verbal interaction have a number of different propositional attitudes towards their presuppositions (Sect. 3.1). In this chapter, I propose an experimental study aimed at estimating the psychological plausibility of the Stalnakerian model (Sect. 3.2). In particular, the goal of my experiment is to evaluate variations in accepting as appropriate a sentence that triggers a presupposition, where different attitudes are taken towards the presupposition required. The study conducted suggests that, coherently with the common ground account, if a speaker has the attitude of belief towards the content of a presupposition, he/she may evaluate an utterance as more appropriate in a shorter time than in cases where she holds an attitude of presumption or of assumption (Sect. 3.3).

Keywords

Common ground Propositional attitudes Acceptance Appropriateness 
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Copyright information

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Filippo Domaneschi
    • 1
  1. 1.University of GenoaGenoaItaly

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