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Presupposition: accepted information or embraced beliefs? The role of informative function and trigger type in separating two levels of accommodation

Giunta, Giulia; Roccaforte, Maria; Pouscoulous, Nausicaa; Lombardi Vallauri, Edoardo; (2025) Presupposition: accepted information or embraced beliefs? The role of informative function and trigger type in separating two levels of accommodation. Folia Linguistica 10.1515/flin-2024-0027. Green open access

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Abstract

How the speaker presents information linguistically may impact the recipient’s epistemic vigilance. For instance, information communicated through a presupposition suggests it does not warrant thorough scrutiny. Traditionally, presuppositions arise from the use of various linguistic triggers, but it has been suggested that a focal status can suspend the triggering of the presupposition. Using a mistake recognition task, we investigate whether the information structure of the utterance (specifically, topic-focus articulation) and different triggers (definite descriptions vs temporal clauses) influence presuppositions’ persuasive potential, both immediately and after one week. Our findings suggest that while a focal status of the presupposition does not seem to affect immediate mistake recognition rates, it shapes memorial representation, but only for one of the tested triggers (definite descriptions). Thus, this study provides further support that presupposition serves as a persuasive strategy; specifically, it indicates that for memory formation, this is influenced by the interplay between the information structure of the utterance and the type of trigger.

Type: Article
Title: Presupposition: accepted information or embraced beliefs? The role of informative function and trigger type in separating two levels of accommodation
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1515/flin-2024-0027
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2024-0027
Language: English
Additional information: Open Access. © 2024 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Keywords: belief acceptance; conversational cooperation; presupposition accommodation; presupposition triggers; topic-focus
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Linguistics
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10203730
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