Impossible Presuppositions. On factivity, focus, and triviality
Matías Verdecchia
September 2021 

This paper analyzes certain restrictions on polarity focus marking in clauses embedded under emotive factive predicates. It argues that these restrictions arise because this configuration leads to a systematic presupposition failure in virtue of its focus value, which I call impossible presupposition. The main argument offered here supporting this approach involves some novel asymmetries with factive clauses in predicate doubling construction in Spanish. From a theoretical perspective, the larger agenda of this article is to provide new evidence that certain types of ungrammaticality are due to semantic-pragmatic factors, namely, logical triviality.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/006179 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
keywords:	presupposition; factivity; polarity focus; predicate doubling; triviality, semantics, syntax
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