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A Rule of Presupposition Carrying in Alternative Questions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Patricia Trainor
Patricia Trainor*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

In alternative questions, the second clause is frequently incomplete. For example, sentence (2) is understood as synonymous with sentence (1):

  1. (1) Did John read the book or did Mary read the book?

  2. (2) Did John read the book or did Mary?

This paper addresses the problem of how the incomplete second conjuncts are to be assigned full semantic representations, and thus attempts to account for the synonymy of (1) and (2).

Type
Remarks/Remarques
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 1980 , pp. 53 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1980

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Footnotes

*

This article is a slightly expanded version of a paper presented at the 1979 LSA Winter Meeting in Los Angeles. I would like to thank E. A. Cowper for much helpful discussion of the issues, and J. K. Chambers for his comments on an earlier draft. The research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

References

Akmajian, Adrian (1970) “Aspects of the Grammar of Focus in English,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
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Chomsky, Noam (1971) “Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Semantic Interpretation,” in Steinberg, D. D. and Jakobovits, L. A., eds., Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Cambridge University Press. 183–216.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray (1972) Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray (1977) Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 2. MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar