Parenthesis and presupposition in discourse
Parentheses do not affect the semantic truth conditions of the host clause, but they do affect the discourse structure. We propose a maximally simple update system for the conversational context. Presuppositions are treated as past requests for the interlocutor’s consent. Parentheticals act like overt presuppositions unless they are linearly last in the utterance, in which case they can be taken as a current update request. This has consequences for the interlocutor’s ability to target a parenthetical message. We predict that sentence-final parentheses, and in particular attributive appositives, can be generically addressed, but medial ones only by a specific response. We also discuss why certain non-clausal parentheses, including identifying appositions, behave differently.
References (19)
AnderBois, Scott, Adrian Brasoveanu & Robert Henderson. 2013. At-issue proposals and appositive impositions in discourse. Journal of Semantics 30(4). 1–46. 

Cardoso, Adriana & Mark de Vries. 2010. Internal and external heads in appositive constructions. Manuscript, University of Lisbon & University of Groningen.
Döring, Sandra. 2013. Parentheticals are - presumably - CPs. Manuscript, University of Leipzig.
Geurts, Bart. 1997. Good news about the description theory of names. Journal of Semantics 141. 319–348. 

Grice, Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.
Griffiths, James. in prep. Topics in the structure and meaning of parenthesis. PhD dissertation, University of Groningen.
Harris, Jesse & Christopher Potts. 2009. Perspective-shifting with appositives and expressives. Linguistics and Philosophy 32(6). 523–552. 

Heringa, Herman & Mark de Vries. 2008. Een semantische classificatie van apposities. Nederlandse Taalkunde 131. 60–87.
Heringa, Herman. 2011. Appositional constructions. PhD dissertation, University of Groningen.
Kehler, Andrew. 2002. Coherence, reference, and the theory of grammar. Stanford: CSLI.
Koev, Todor. 2013. Apposition and the structure of discourse. PhD thesis, Rutgers University.
Krifka, Manfred. 2013. Response particles as propositional anaphors. Proceedings of SALT 231. 1–18. 

Nouwen, Rick. 2007. On appositives and dynamic binding. Research on Language and Computation 5(1). 87–102. 

Potts, Christopher. 2002. The lexical semantics of parenthetical-as and appositive-which. Syntax 5(1). 55–88. 

Potts, Christopher. 2005. The logic of conventional implicatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simons, Mandy, Judith Tonhauser, David Beaver & Craige Roberts. 2010. What projects and why. Proceedings of SALT 201. 309–327. 

Stalnaker, Robert. 1978. Assertion. In Peter Cole (ed.), Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics, 315–32. New York: Academic Press.
Wang, Linton, Brian Reese & Eric McCready. 2005. The projection problem of nominal appositives. Snippets 101. 13–14.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
McInnerney, Andrew
2022.
Parenthetical niching: A third‐factor phonosyntactic analysis.
Syntax 25:3
► pp. 379 ff.

Ott, Dennis & Mark de Vries
2016.
Right-dislocation as deletion.
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 34:2
► pp. 641 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.