WHAT IS PRESUPPOSITION ACCOMMODATION, AGAIN?*
Open accessAbstract
Introduction Presupposition accommodation is the process by which the context is adjusted quietly and without fuss to accept the utterance of a sentence that imposes certain requirements on the context in which it is processed. In this paper, I explore some questions about accommodation that are still often asked. There are complaints that the putative process involves mysterious magic and that it is posited only to save a superfluous or wrong theory of presupposition. I argue that these complaints are mistaken: accommodation is not magic and is needed. The paper has two parts: 1. Sections 1–4 explain the common ground theory of presupposition and defend the need for and the propriety of accommodation. 2. Sections 5–7 address some further questions about accommodation and are somewhat more speculative.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
When an assertion violates common-ground suppositions, it will either require a minor adjustment (accommodation) in the presupposition or be rejected with a failure of perlocutionary effect.
“When an assertion, however, violates the common-ground suppositions, it will either require a minor adjustment (accommodation) in the presupposition (van Fintel 2008) or be rejected with a failure of perlocutionary effect.”
From Studies in<i>dhāraṇī</i>literature II: Pragmatics of<i>dhāraṇī</i>s (2014) · cites this paper as van Fintel 2008
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Studies in<i>dhāraṇī</i>literature II: Pragmatics of<i>dhāraṇī</i>s
Davidson, R. M. (2014) · Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies · doi:10.1017/s0041977x13000943 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
- Authors
- Von Fintel, K.
- Venue
- Philosophical Perspectives
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2008-12
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 137-170
- ISSN
- 1520-8583 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2130529146
- Cited by
- 424
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 35 · 2019: 66 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 30 · 2015: 44 · 2014: 26 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 79.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- Philosophical Perspectives (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Keywords
- presupposition accommodation, presupposition, pragmatics, conversational implicature
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
