Presuppositions as beliefs. Horton, D. & Hirst, G. In Proceedings, 12th International conference on computational linguistics (COLING-88), pages 255–260, Budapest, August, 1988.
abstract   bibtex   

Most theories of presupposition implicitly assume that presuppositions are facts, and that all agents involved in a discourse share belief in the presuppositions that it generates. These unrealistic assumptions can be eliminated if each presupposition is treated as the belief of an agent. However, it is not enough to consider only the beliefs of the speaker; we show that the beliefs of other agents are often involved. We describe a new model, including an improved definition of presupposition, that treats presuppositions as beliefs and considers the beliefs of all agents involved in the discourse. We show that treating presuppositions as beliefs makes it possible to explain phenomena that cannot be explained otherwise.

@InProceedings{	  horton4,
  author	= {Diane Horton and Graeme Hirst},
  title		= {Presuppositions as beliefs},
  booktitle	= {Proceedings, 12th International conference on
		  computational linguistics (COLING-88)},
  address	= {Budapest},
  month		= {August},
  year		= {1988},
  pages		= {255--260},
  abstract	= {<p>Most theories of presupposition implicitly assume that
		  presuppositions are facts, and that all agents involved in
		  a discourse share belief in the presuppositions that it
		  generates. These unrealistic assumptions can be eliminated
		  if each presupposition is treated as the belief of an
		  agent. However, it is not enough to consider only the
		  beliefs of the speaker; we show that the beliefs of other
		  agents are often involved. We describe a new model,
		  including an improved definition of presupposition, that
		  treats presuppositions as beliefs and considers the beliefs
		  of all agents involved in the discourse. We show that
		  treating presuppositions as beliefs makes it possible to
		  explain phenomena that cannot be explained otherwise. </p>},
  download	= {http://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/gh/Horton+Hirst-88.pdf}
}

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