Open AccessWord-meaning and sentence-internal presupposition
Author(s) -
Torgrim Solstad
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.44.2006.320
Subject(s) - presupposition , principle of compositionality , linguistics , sentence , pragmatics , unification , computer science , realm , german , formalism (music) , philosophy , history , art , musical , archaeology , visual arts , programming language
The German causal preposition durch ('by', 'through') poses a challenge to formal-semantic analyses applying strict compositionality. To deal with this challenge, a formalism which builds on recent important developments in Discourse Representation Theory is developed, including a more elaborate analysis of presuppositional phenomena as well as the integration into the theory of unification as a mode of composition. It is argued that that the observed unificational phenomena belong in the realm of pragmatics, providing an argument for presuppositional phenomena at a sentence- and word-internal level.