Presupposition: an (un)common attitude

According to dynamic semantics, the meaning of a sentence is its context-change potential, where contexts are identified with information states that represent what is commonly assumed in a conversation. The meaning of a sentence is modeled as an update function that takes a context as its argument and has the updated context where the sentence is accepted as its value. Assuming that a sentence cannot be used appropriately in a context that does not entail, or satisfy, its triggered pre-supposition, this function will be partial. This chapter deals with pre-suppositions. The author thinks of pre-supposition more explicitly as a propositional attitude, account for this attitude in possible world semantics, explains some pre-suppositional phenomena in terms of it, while respecting the distinction between content and force. The chapter first states the way in which pre-suppositions are standardly accounted for within dynamic semantics. Keywords: context-change potential; dynamic semantics; propositional attitude