UNDERSPECIFIED PRESUPPOSITIONS 1

In this paper, van der Sandt’s (1992) account of presupposition as anaphora is reconstructed in Underspecified Discourse Representation Theory (UDRT). We show that UDRT readily provides the means for representing presuppositional anaphora, making redundant a special αstructure as employed by van der Sandt. Our account is non-procedural, fully monotonic, and offers an underspecified representation for ambiguities arising from presupposition accommodation. In this approach, presupposed material is integrated directly into underspecified discourse representation structures. Presupposition binding and accommodation take place by adding subordination restrictions to these underspecified structures. This allows us to capture certain instances of presupposition denial, as well as lexical variation in the behavior of presupposition triggers.