Is the mechanism behind presupposition projection and filtering fundamentally asymmetric or symmetric? This is a foundational question for the theory of presupposition which has been at the centre of attention in recent literature (Schlenker in Theor Linguist 38(3):287–316, 2008b. https://doi.org/10.1515/THLI.2008.021 , Semant Pragmat 2(3):1–78, 2009. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.2.3 ; Rothschild in Semant Pragmat 4(3):1–43, 2011/2015. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.4.3 a.o.). It also bears on broader issues concerning the source of asymmetries observed in natural language: are these simply rooted in superficial asymmetries of language use (language use happens in time, which we experience as fundamentally asymmetric); or are they, at least in part, directly encoded in linguistic knowledge and representations? In this paper we aim to make progress on these questions by exploring presupposition projection across conjunction, which has traditionally been taken as a central piece of evidence that presupposition filtering is asymmetric in general. As a number of authors have recently pointed out, however, the evidence which has typically been used to support this conclusion is muddied by independent issues concerning redundancy; additional concerns have to do with the possibility of local accommodation. We report on a series of experiments, building on previous work by Chemla and Schlenker (Nat Lang Semant 20(2):177–226, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-012-9080-7 ) and Schwarz (in: Schwarz (ed) Experimental perspectives on presuppositions, Springer, Cham, 2015), using inference and acceptability tasks, which aim to control for both of these potential confounds. In our results, we find strong evidence for left-to-right filtering across conjunctions, but no evidence for right-to-left filtering—even when right-to-left filtering would, if available, rescue an otherwise unacceptable sentence. These results suggest that presupposition filtering across conjunction is asymmetric, contra suggestions in the recent literature (Schlenker in Theor Linguist 34(3):157–212, 2008a. https://doi.org/10.1515/THLI.2008.013 , 2009 a.o.), and pave the way for the investigation of further questions about the nature of this asymmetry and presupposition projection more generally. Our results also have broader implications for the study of presupposition: we find important differences in the verdicts of acceptability versus inference tasks in testing for projected content, which has both methodological ramifications for the question of how to distinguish presupposed content, and theoretical repercussions for understanding the nature of projection and presuppositions more generally.

中文翻译：

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我们发现跨连接的投影是不对称的（确实如此！）

预设投影和过滤背后的机制是基本不对称还是对称？这是预设理论的一个基本问题，在最近的文献中一直是关注的中心（Schlenker in Theor Linguist 38(3):287–316, 2008b. https://doi.org/10.1515/THLI.2008.021 , Semant Pragmat 2(3):1–78, 2009. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.2.3 ; Rothschild in Semant Pragmat 4(3):1–43, 2011/2015. https://doi .org/10.3765/sp.4.3 ao)。它还涉及与在自然语言中观察到的不对称来源有关的更广泛问题：这些是否仅仅源于语言使用的表面不对称（语言使用发生在时间上，我们认为从根本上是不对称的）？或者他们，至少部分，直接编码在语言知识和表示中？在本文中，我们旨在通过探索跨连接的预设投影在这些问题上取得进展，这在传统上被视为预设过滤一般不对称的核心证据。然而，正如一些作者最近指出的那样，通常用来支持这一结论的证据被有关冗余的独立问题所混淆。其他问题与当地住宿的可能性有关。我们报告了一系列实验，这些实验建立在 Chemla 和 Schlenker 之前的工作（Nat Lang Semant 20(2):177-226, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-012-9080-7）和Schwarz (in: Schwarz (ed) 对预设的实验观点，Springer, Cham, 2015)，使用推理和可接受性任务，旨在控制这两种潜在的混淆。在我们的结果中，我们发现了从左到右过滤连接词的有力证据，但没有从右到左过滤的证据——即使从右到左过滤（如果有的话）可以挽救一个不可接受的句子。这些结果表明，在最近的文献（Schlenker in Theor Linguist 34(3):157–212, 2008a. https://doi.org/10.1515/THLI.2008.013 , 2009 ao）中，跨连词的预设过滤是不对称的，相反的建议，并为更普遍地调查有关这种不对称性和预设投影的性质的进一步问题铺平道路。我们的结果对预设研究也有更广泛的意义：