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Toward a Taxonomy of Projective Content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Judith Tonhauser ,
David Beaver ,
Craige Roberts  and
Mandy Simons
Judith Tonhauser*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
David Beaver*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
Craige Roberts*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Mandy Simons*
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
*
222 Oxley Hall, 1712 Neil Ave Columbus, OH 43210 [judith@ling.osu.edu] [croberts@ling.osu.edu]
CLA 4.304, Mailcode B5100 Austin, TX 78712 [dib@utexas.edu]
222 Oxley Hall, 1712 Neil Ave Columbus, OH 43210 [judith@ling.osu.edu] [croberts@ling.osu.edu]
Baker Hall 135 Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 [simons@andrew.cmu.edu]
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Abstract

Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts's (2005) conventional implicatures, are contents that may project when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the family-of-sentences diagnostic (e.g. Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet 1990). This article establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics, including a variant of the family-of-sentences diagnostic, that can be applied with linguistically untrained consultants in the field and the laboratory. These diagnostics are intended to serve as part of a toolkit for exploring projective contents across languages, thus allowing generalizations to be examined and validated cross-linguistically. We apply the diagnostics in two languages, focusing on Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní), and comparing the results to those for English. Our study of Paraguayan Guaraní is the first systematic exploration of projective content in a language other than English. Based on the application of our diagnostics to a wide range of constructions, four subclasses of projective contents emerge. The resulting taxonomy of projective content has strong implications for contemporary theories of projection (e.g. Karttunen 1974, Heim 1983, van der Sandt 1992, Potts 2005, Schlenker 2009), which were developed for the projective properties of particular subclasses and fail to generalize to the full set of projective contents.

Keywords

projective contentsfelicity constraintslocal effectParaguayan Guaranícross-linguistically applicable diagnostics

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 66 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Linguistic Society of America

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