Projection

A well-known feature of both thick terms and slurs is projection (Väyrynen 2009, 2013, Eklund 2011, 2013 for thick terms, Croom 2011, Camp 2013, Jeshion 2013a, 2013b for slurs). Consider the following examples (Väyrynen 2013: 64, 70, 78):

7. Madonna’s show is lewd.

8. Madonna’s show isn’t lewd.

9. Is Madonna’s show lewd?

10. If Madonna show is lewd, tabloid press will go nuts.

11. Madonna’s show might be lewd.

π7. Things that are sexually explicit beyond conventional boundaries are bad because of being so.

All the above occurrences of the term ‘lewd’ seem to involve a negative evaluative content along the lines of π7, even when the predicate is embedded under negation, questions, conditionals or modals. The same happens with slurs:

12. Madonna is a wop.

13. Madonna is not a wop.

14. Is Madonna a wop?

15. If Madonna is a wop, I don’t want to go to her concerts.

29 16. Madonna might be a wop.

π12. Italians are bad because of being Italian.

For both thick terms and slurs, we observe that the presupposed content triggered by hybrid evaluatives scopes out of semantic embeddings. One reason to test these intuitions by employing an objectionable evaluative is that it is hard to perceive whether a certain utterance presupposes a certain content, when such a content is something that speakers and addresses already take for granted (see Hare 1963).

However, because in principle any thick term could be seen as objectionable, projection data concern thick terms in general (see Väyrynen 2013: 56).

Projection is typically taken to be the distinctive feature of presuppositions.

However, recent work in linguistics emphasized the heterogeneity of projective content. In particular, Tonhauser et al. (2013), while leaving aside notions such as

‘presupposition’, ‘conventional implicature’ etc., individuate four classes of expressions and constructions that give rise to projective contents. The four classes of triggers are distinguished by two properties, (i) “strong contextual felicity” and (ii)

“obligatory local effect”.

Projective

content Strong contextual

felicity Obligatory Local effect

Class A yes yes yes

Class B yes no no

Class C yes no yes

Class D yes yes no

The strong contextual felicity requirement demands that the trigger at stake imposes a strong constraint on the context, i.e. that the occurrence of the trigger requires that a certain content is entailed by the context in order for the utterance to make sense. Take a context where Lucy is on the bus eating a cucumber salad and a woman that she does not know starts talking to her and says:

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17. Your salad looks nice. I never make cucumber salad at home cause my daughter hates cucumbers.

Even though Lucy did not know that the women had a daughter, the utterance is acceptable: The projective content triggered by ‘my daughter’ does not have a strong contextual felicity requirement. Now imagine that the woman goes on and says:

18. Our bus driver is eating empadanas, too. (Tonhauser et al. 2013: 78)

The utterance is not felicitous unless a salient person in the context – different from the bus driver – is eating empanadas, which – as far as Lucy knows – is not the case. We conclude that the projective content triggered by ‘too’ has a strong contextual felicity requirement.

Slurs and thick terms pattern like the possessive ‘my daughter’ and unlike ‘too’

with respect to the strong contextual felicity requirement. As a matter of fact, speakers who do not endorse the presupposed evaluation of certain expressions can nevertheless make sense of what the interlocutor is saying. Suppose that Lucy and the woman on the bus are talking about a movie. The woman on the bus utters something like (19) and (20):

19. That movie is lewd!

20. The director is a wop.

Lucy would have no problem in making sense of (19) and (20), even if she does not share at all what the woman is presupposing about Italian people and sexual explicitness. In sections 2.2 and 3.3 we will come back to this point and discuss what happens when speakers do not share the presuppositions that the interlocutor is taking for granted.

The second parameter with respect to which Tonhauser et al. (2013) classify projective content is obligatory local effect, that is, they test whether the projecting

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content needs to be part of the local context of a belief-predicate (i.e. the attitude holder’s epistemic state) or not. For instance, suppose that Mary says:

21. Jane believes that Bill has stopped smoking.

The projective content – namely that Bill used to smoke – has to be ascribed to Jane (and it can be ascribed to Mary, but that is not obligatory). We conclude that the projective content triggered by ‘stop’ shows obligatory local effect. Now suppose that Mary says:

22. Jane believes that Bill, who is Sue’s cousin, is Sue’s brother.

(Tonhauser et al. 2013: 92)

The projective content of the appositive – namely that Bill is Sue’s cousin – is not ascribed to Jane, but only to Mary: Appositives do not show obligatory local effect.

Slurs and thick terms do not show obligatory local effect, either. Suppose that Mary says:

23. Jane told me that if the movie was lewd, it would have been more popular.⁸

24. Jane told me that the director is a wop.

In (23) and (24), the projective contents – namely that Italian people are bad and that things that are sexually explicit beyond conventional boundaries are bad – do not have to be ascribed to Jane. Mary’s utterances are compatible with Jane lacking any negative attitude towards Italians and sexually explicit things (attitudes that would be ascribed only to Mary).

In conclusion, we observe that the projective content of slurs and thick terms does not have a strong contextual felicity requirement, nor obligatory local effect. In Tonhauser et al. (2013)’s classification, both slurs and thick terms would belong to

8 I owe this example to Isidora Stojanovic (p.c.)

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‘class B’, the class of those expressions that (i) give rise to projective content; (ii) do not have a strong contextual felicity requirement; (iii) do not have an obligatory local effect. It is noteworthy that this category includes items that have been analyzed in the literature in terms of conventional implicatures (for instance, appositives) and expressions that have been analyzed in terms of presuppositions (for instance, personal pronouns and possessive noun phrases).