REVIEWS

• Published in: Nordic journal of linguistics Vol. 37; no. 1; p. 112
• Main Author: Coppock, Elizabeth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.05.2014
• ISSN: 0332-5865; 1502-4717
• DOI: 10.1017/S0332586514000092

According to Elbourne, the cat has the following syntactic structure: (1) [[the cat] s 1] The denotation of this expression depends on the interpretation of the pronoun s 1, determined by an assignment function g, which assigns the situation pronoun to a particular situation. [...]the need for situation or world variables in the syntax, or something with equivalent power' (p. 144). What presuppositions are predicted for e.g. If John flies to Toronto, his sister will pick him up from the airport and If John is a scuba diver, hell bring his wetsuit? * Elbourne suggests (p. 66) treating disjunction in terms of conditionals, noting the equivalence between boolean disjunction [¬P ⋁ Q] and material implication [P [arrow right] Q]. Since [¬P ⋁ Q] is equivalent to [Q ⋁ ¬P], this would seem to predict that Either Mary is allergic to peanuts too, or John is not allergic to peanuts should be acceptable in the absence of a prior mention of peanut allergies. While the use of situation variables does open up the possibility of this approach, Elbourne need not have taken the opportunity to pursue it; he could in principle have combined his theory of the definite article with any number of existing theories of presupposition projection (dynamic or static). [...]Elbourne's ideas on this are more fully developed, I would keep my investments in more traditional approaches to presupposition projection even if I were to adopt the idea of a situation pronoun in the syntax.