A Presuppositional Analysis of Specific Indefinites

Common Grounds as Structured Information States

af Jae-Il Yeom

A specific indefinite presupposes that someone has in mind an individual who has the property denoted by its descriptive content. Having an individual inmind means that the agent knows who the referent is. This affects the information state of the agent, but not the others. The asymmetric information, shared by all conversational participants, requires a common ground to have multiple information states, each for each participant. The information state of the agent who has an individual in mind ... (Læs mere)