AUTHOR=Domaneschi Filippo , Carrea Elena , Penco Carlo , Greco Alberto 

TITLE=Selecting Presuppositions in Conditional Clauses. Results from a Psycholinguistic Experiment

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=6

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02026

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02026

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>In this paper, we propose an experiment concerning presupposition selection in conditional sentences containing a presupposition trigger in the consequent. Many theories claim that sentences like <italic>if p</italic>, <underline><italic>q</italic></underline><italic>q</italic>'—where <underline><italic>q</italic></underline> is the presupposition of the assertive component <italic>q</italic>'—have unconditional presuppositions, namely, they simply project <underline><italic>q</italic></underline>. Other theories suggest that these kinds of conditional sentences project conditional presuppositions of the form <italic>if p</italic>, <underline><italic>q</italic></underline>. Data collected suggest two results: (i) in accordance with other experiments (by Romoli), dependence between the presupposition <italic>q</italic> and the antecedent <italic>p</italic> favors the selection of a conditional presupposition <italic>if p</italic>, <underline><italic>q</italic></underline>. (ii) presupposition selection in conditional sentences with a trigger in the consequent is affected by speakers' cognitive load: if speakers are highly cognitive loaded, then they are less disposed to select a conditional presupposition. We conclude by arguing that cognitive load represents a key factor for the analysis of linguistic and philosophical theories of context.</p>