The Kinematics of Presupposition

The Context Change Potential Model of presuppositions, due to Heim, Kartunnen and Stalnaker, is examined in the light of recent work in dynamic semantics. It is shown that some phenomena concerning the interaction of presupposition and quantification, which had been thought troublesome for the Context Change Model, can be handled without invoking local or intermediate accommodation. A model of global accommodation is developed, and this is applied to a number of pragmatic issues including the strengthening of standard Context Change predictions concerning the projection of presuppositions from conditionals and the licencing of definite descriptions