Abstract:

		ACCOMMODATION

David Beaver (Stanford University)
Henk Zeevat (University of Amsterdam)

July 2004

Chapter to appear in Ramchand, G. and C. Reiss (eds.), Oxford Handbook
of Linguistic Interfaces, Oxford University Press

Accommodation is an inferential process whereby hearers react to
presuppositions that are not satisfied. Accommodation can be seen as
an adjustment of a model of the common ground, or an adjustment to a
representation of the meaning of an utterance. This handbook chapter
surveys accounts of accommodation including, for example, models of
Lewis, Heim and van der Sandt. We condense generalizations about
accommodation into fourteen principles that are either implicit or
explicit in prior literature, and discuss empirical and theoretical
pros and cons of each of them. We also consider evidence that patterns
of accommodation differ from trigger to trigger. We discuss
alternative explanations of this phenomenon and the implications it
has for the taxonomy of presupposition inducing expressions.