This paper takes up the problem from Stalnaker (1974) of deriving thepragmatic presuppositions of verbs such as know, stop and win asconversational implicatures, without hypothesizing a semanticpresupposition. I interpret data discussed by Karttunen (1969),Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet (1990), Simons (2001) and others asindicating that there is a distinct group of ?soft? presupposition triggerswhose pragmatic presuppositions, though systematic, are also contextdependentand easily suspendable. These are distinguished from?hard? presuppositions triggers like it-clefts and too which on theassumptions of this paper introduce semantic presuppositions. Thesedistinctions are defended in sections 1 and 2. Sections 3 and 4 reviewand criticize proposals from Stalnaker (1974) and Simons (2001) forderiving the pragmatic presuppositions of soft triggers asconversational implicatures. Section 5 introduces the hypothesis thatthe pragmatic presuppositions of soft triggers come from alternatives tolexical meanings, such as the alternative lose to win. A pragmaticpresupposition is derived as the default assumption that somealternative is true. In section 6, the default existential presuppositionof intonational focus is attributed to the same process. Section 7proposes a systematic pragmatic derivation of a conversationalimplicature, using a specific default axiom called G, and a generalpragmatic process of enrichment reasoning. Sections 8, 9, and 10address the projection problem for the pragmatic presuppositions ofsoft triggers. It is shown that projection data for these triggers is thesame as what is seen for hard triggers, which would seem to favor ananalysis using semantic presuppositions. The puzzle is resolved byreplacing G with a default generalization L which refers to the localinformation states manipulated by compositional semantics in dynamiccompositional theories. Section 9 also considers general issues of theinterface between pragmatics and compositional semantics. Section 11shows that the derivation using L also deals with projection data forfocus.
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