Issues in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Disjunction [Paperback]

First published in 2000, this book is about sentences containing the word or, dealing primarily with sentences in which or conjoins clauses, but also some cases in which it conjoins expressions of other categories. The author aims to give an account of the discourse properties and felicity conditions of disjunction, and to use this account in explaining the behaviour of presupposition projection and of anaphora in disjunctive sentences. The author begins by giving an account of the discourse properties and felicity conditions of disjunction before turning to the presupposition projection problem. The final two chapters discuss anaphora and its interactions with disjunction.

1. Introduction; 1.1. Overview 1.1.1. What this dissertation is about 1.1.2. Context change: Pragmatic vs. semantic approaches 1.2. The Stalnakerian Model of Presupposition and Assertion 1.3. Dynamic Semantics 1.3.1. The Fundamentals 1.3.2. File Change Semantics (FCS) and the CCP proposal 1.3.3. Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) 1.3.4. Dynamic Montague Grammar (DMG) Notes to Chapter One; 2. Disjunctive Sentences In Discourse; 2.1. Introduction 2.2. The Discourse Function and Felicity Conditions of Disjunction 2.2.1. The Basic Observations 2.2.2. Relation and Manner in the Stalnakerian Model 2.3. The Enriched Context Change Framework 2.3.1. Presentation 2.3.2. Disjunction and the Relevant Informativity Condition 2.3.3. Disjunction and Simplicity 2.3.4. Disjunction and Rooths Alternative Semantics 2.3.5. Summary 2.4. Some Exceptions 2.4.1. Floutings 2.4.2. Reasoning contexts 2.4.3. Metalinguistic or 2.5. The Exclusive Interpretation of or 2.5.1. Critique of the ambiguity account 2.5.2. Gazdars (1979) account 2.5.3. Exclusivity from exhaustiveness 2.5.4. Exclusivity from alternativeness 2.5.5. Summary 2.6. Conclusion Notes to Chapter Two; 3. Presupposition Projectilƒ.