On presuppositions and (non)coreference

The central objective of this paper is to explore some as yet to be understood aspects of the status and character of Bare Output Conditions, those conditions which, in Chomsky’s Minimalist framework, are assumed to be imposed from the ‘outside’ by cognitive systems that use information from the computational (syntactic) component. I argue for a more articulated theory of the syntax-semantics interface, one which recognizes the ability of BOCs such as referential disjointness conditions to make reference to semantic information from two distinct sources, one of which uses lexically encoded material known as conventional implicature or semantic presupposition. This hypothesis accounts for why lexical elements such as even, only, emphatic anaphors, etc. seem to allow the nominal elements which they focus to freely violate the well-known disjointness requirements known as Condition B, Condition C and Weak Crossover. It also leads to the conclusion that Condition A is not a BOC and that proposals which attempt to derive its effects from movement constraints internal to the computational system are probably on the right track.