2.1 The temporal component of the presupposition

Consider (4). If the speaker says (4a), they can follow it up with (4b), but not with (4c). In other words, Sajana remembering on Tuesday Badma’s breaking the cart is compatible with Badma starting the breaking on Monday, but not on Wednesday (given that we are talking about the same week).³

(4b) specifies the beginning time of the breaking event which is before the time of Sajana’s thinking in (4a), while (4c) specifies the beginning time of the breaking event which is after (4a)’s matrix time. This example suggests that the NMN in (4a) describes an event that started prior to Sajana’s mental state described by hanaxa.

I would like to argue that the temporal inference that we see in (4) is not about temporal precedence, but about pre-existence: an entity or event described by the nominal complement of hanaxa must have started existing in the world at which hanaxa is evaluated (henceforth matrix world) before the time at which hanaxa is evaluated (henceforth matrix time). This implies two things: (i) the left boundary of the entity or event described by the nominal is before the matrix time; (ii) the right boundary of the entity or event described by the nominal is not set and could in principle be after the matrix time. I will show that these are the characteristics of the temporal inference that we observe.

That the left boundary of the time interval corresponding to hanaxa’s complement is before the matrix time can be illustrated with sentences in which hanaxa combines with non-derived noun phrases that denote entities.⁴ I assume that a time interval corresponding to an entity is its life span, the left boundary of which corresponds to the start of its existence, while the right boundary corresponds to the end of its existence. In (5) we see hanaxa taking ‘her future child’ as its Theme argument:

Seseg’s child exists in the actual world at the utterance time, but this is not enough for (5) to be felicitous: the child needs to have existed before the matrix time, which in this case is some contextually salient time 7 years ago. This suggests that hanaxa’s Theme has to pre-exist its event argument: Theme’s left boundary must be before the matrix time.

Another piece of evidence for the pre-existence inference comes from sentences where hanaxa combines with fictional characters that are clearly taken to not be existing at the time of the attitude. Consider (6).

In (6) the object which Badma’s thoughts are about has to not exist before his thoughts. This leads to an infelicitous sentence when such a fictional individual is the internal argument of hanaxa. The desired meaning can be conveyed if a different construction, (6b), is used, where the mental attitude is expressed without a designated attitude verb.

The fact that noun phrases ‘her future child’ and ‘an eight-headed cat’ are internal arguments of hanaxa is crucial for the infelicity of (5b) and (6a). When such noun phrases combine via a postposition tuxai ‘about’, there is no pre-existence requirement. (7a) is fine in a context where Seseg is not pregnant, and (7b), although less preferred compared to (6b), is acceptable in a context where Badma imagines a non-existing animal.

This suggests that being the topic/object of thoughts is not a sufficient requirement for being subject to the pre-existence inference; being the internal argument of the verb is a necessary condition.

When hanaxa combines with nominalized expressions, showing the pre-existence requirement is more complicated, because of the question of how it interacts with the temporal/aspectual properties of nominalized clauses (see sections 3.2.1 and 4.2 for discussion). Nevertheless, I take evidence from hanaxa combining with non-derived nouns to be suggestive of the requirement that the left boundary of the time interval corresponding to the object of hanaxa has to be before the matrix time.

Now let us consider how the right boundary of hanaxa’s Theme can be placed with respect to the matrix time. There are two facts suggesting that there is no restriction placed on it. First, when hanaxa combines with entities, e.g., with proper names, (8), the sentence does not presuppose that the individual denoted by the entity stopped existing: Badma does not need to be dead in order for (8) to be true.

Provided that when the time function takes an entity, it returns its life span — the time interval corresponding to the entity’s existence, (8) suggests that the temporal component does not require the right boundary of the Theme argument to precede the time of the thinking event.

Second, the placement of the right boundary of an event described by the NMN depends on the aspectual properties of the participle/form that it is based on.⁵ There are nominalized forms such that the left boundary of a NMN-event is before the matrix time, but the right boundary can be after the matrix time. One such form is presented in (9), where an analytical verbal form consisting of the verb ‘be’ and a converb is nominalized.⁶⁷

If the pre-existence inference required the right boundary of an event described by the nominalized expression to be before the matrix time, we would have expected interpretations like in (9) to not be possible.

Thus, I conclude that in sentences where hanaxa combines with a nominal phrase (noun or nominalized clause), there is a pre-existence inference, which places a requirement on the left boundary, but not the right boundary of hanaxa’s object:

I propose that the factivity inference that we saw in (2b) and (3) is a consequence of (10): if the left boundary of an entity/event in the matrix world that one is thinking about is before the thinking, that entity/event has to exist at the time of thinking.

Is this pre-existence presupposition responsible for turning ‘thinking’ into ‘remembering’? I would like to argue that hanaxa in sentences with nominal arguments does not in fact get the meaning that verbs meaning ‘remember’ in other languages have, but that the pre-existence presupposition is responsible for hanaxa being translated as ‘remember’. Buryat does not seem to have a designated verb whose meaning would describe memories of attitude holders, and hanaxa with nominal arguments does not have to describe memories either, as can be seen from examples like (11). In (11) hanaxa takes a nominalized clause as its complement, and is modified by an adverb türü:∫ɘnxijɘ: ‘for the first time’.⁸

If hanaxa with a direct object described memories, then modification by türü:∫ɘnxijɘ: ‘for the first time’ should have been impossible: the attitude holder needs to have previous thoughts about an entity/event in order to remember them. The fact that such modification is possible suggests that hanaxa’s meaning does not directly reference memories or previous mental states, and its pre-existence presupposition is about existence in the world at which hanaxa is evaluated. This conclusion is supported by the fact that (11) is infelicitous in the context B, where the discourse participants are ignorant about Badma’s working skills in the actual world.

While hanaxa’s meaning does not appeal to memories, its presupposition might be similar enough to presuppositions of verbs like remember to warrant the ‘remember’ translation in sentences with nominal complements. While hanaxa presupposes that its internal argument existed in the actual world before the matrix time, it could be that verbs like remember presuppose that their internal arguments existed in both the memory/mental state of the attitude holder and in the actual world before the matrix time. If that is so, then remembering an individual entails hanaxa-ing that individual. Thus, in the absence of a more specific verb like remember, hanaxa + NP can be used for describing remembering situations in a language like Buryat. I leave further comparison between hanaxa with nominal complements and verbs like remember for further research.

An anonymous reviewer raises an alternative hypothesis that hanaxa just requires that its object has been previously mentioned. I don’t think hanaxa has such requirement. In (12) Badma’s breaking a cart has not been previously mentioned in the discourse. Nevertheless, Dugar’s utterance, which has the nominalized expression Badma’s breaking the cart as the complement of hanaxa, is felicitous in this context.

In (13) Earth being flat is previously mentioned in the discourse. However, this is not sufficient for the nominalized clause Earth’s being flat to be used felicitously as the object of hanaxa.

Thus, being previously mentioned is neither necessary nor sufficient condition for using a nominal as hanaxa’s object.

2.2 The presuppositional nature of the inference

The pre-existence inference behaves like a presupposition: it introduces backgrounded information which is common knowledge to the participants of the conversation, and it projects in questions and survives under negation, as illustrated in (14) and (15), respectively. This suggests that the inference at hand is a presupposition.

The projection of the pre-existence presupposition is summarized in (16).

The inference that projects in (14)–(15) is that there is an event of Badma breaking the cart in the actual world that started before the matrix time. If this inference is part of the common ground, then the speaker cannot be ignorant about it (14) or directly contradict it (15). The analysis of how the pre-existence presupposition is encoded should ensure that the empirical generalization in (16) is derived.

2.3 The presupposition does not come from the complement

Factivity is one of the components of the presupposition under consideration. What part of the sentence contributes this inference? There are several hypotheses about the origin of factive presuppositions (see discussion in Özyıldız 2016); one prominent hypothesis is that factive presuppositions are contributed by the complement of the verb (Kiparsky & Kiparsky 1970; Kallulli 2010; De Cuba 2007; De Cuba & Urogdi 2010; Haegeman 2014; Kratzer 2006; Kastner 2015; Hanink & Bochnak 2017a). This hypothesis is attractive in light of cross-linguistic data, which suggests that there are correlations found between the syntactic category of the complement of attitude verbs and their factivity (Moulton 2009; Abrusán 2011; Özyıldız 2017). I will argue that this hypothesis cannot be maintained for Buryat.

First, the factive inference does not always arise when otherwise non-factive verbs combine with nominalized expressions. For example, when verbs ɘtigɘxɘ ‘believe’ and naidaxa ‘hope’ take NMNs as their complements, no factive inference arises, hence the felicity of (17)–(18).¹⁰

This suggests that the nominal status of the argument does not suffice for the factive inference to come about. Note that the nominalized expressions in (17)–(18) are the same as the ones we have seen with hanaxa, except that they bear a different case. While hanaxa ‘think’ assigns accusative case to nominalized clauses, (2a), the verbs ɘtigɘxɘ ‘believe’ and naidaxa ‘hope’ assign a lexical case — dative. The argument structure of the attitude verb, reflected in case assignment, seems to play a role in whether the factive inference is present. Similiar observations have been made by Djärv (2019), who shows that verbs like believe and know have different argument structures (with different options for case assignment in German): believe, but not know, selects for individuals that describe source or vessel of the propositional content; know on the other hand combines with individuals without any relation to the propositional content. We can hypothesize that a distinction along similar lines is present in Barguzin Buryat, although a more thorough investigation of this issue is necessary.

Second, the nominalized expression under consideration can have indefinite uses, so the factive inference cannot be due to the definiteness of the complement (see Kastner 2015; Hanink & Bochnak 2017a for proposals of how definiteness can lead to factivity). Buryat does not have articles, but it can be still shown that the NMN can have indefinite uses.¹¹ Consider (19).

The fact that three women could have each remembered different singing of a song about Buryatia by Sajana suggests that the NMN does not have to be definite: definite descriptions have uniqueness presuppositions, and having a uniqueness presupposition would have made (19) infelicitous in the context A. Thus, given that NMNs can denote indefinite descriptions and that the presence of the factive inference does not seem to depend on the context, I conclude that an account of the factivity alternation has to be able to derive the factive inference even for indefinite uses of NMNs.

To sum up, the factive component cannot be attributed to the meaning of the nominalized clause: the fact that it is nominalized is not sufficient for the factive inference (NMN’s θ-role seems to play a role), definiteness is not necessary for the factive inference (NMNs can have indefinite readings). Therefore, while in (1a)–(2a) we saw that the type of the complement (CP versus NP) correlates with the presence of the presupposition, I conclude that the meaning of the nominalized expression itself does not supply the presupposition. I propose that the correlation is a result of CPs and NPs combining with attitude verbs in different ways.

3.1 Hanaxa + CP

3.1.2 Combining CP with hanaxa

The LF for the sentence in (23) is in (26).

(26)	The LF of hanaxa + CP

The CP combines with hanaxa as a modifier of its eventuality argument by Predicate Modification, as shown in (27).

(27)	⟦hanaxa that Badma broke the cart⟧w,t,g =
	λee. thinkw,t(e) ∧ Cont(e) = λw’.λt’. Badma broke the cart in w’ at some time t” that precedes t’

Then Voice introduces the external argument, with the resulting one-place predicate of events getting existentially closed, and this proposition is combined by Intensional Functional Application¹⁷ with the contextually restricted (by the free variable t₁) past tense, which I assume to be an existential quantifier over times (Ogihara 1995).¹⁸ Thus, we get the meaning in (29).¹⁹

(28)	⟦PAST t1⟧w,t,g = λpsit. ∃t’ < t ∧ t’ ⊆ g(1) [p(w)(t’) = 1], where ⊆ is a relation between two time intervals such that one falls within the other; a contextually supplied interval g(1) is the value of a free time variable t1

(29)	⟦Sajana thought that Badma broke the cart⟧w,t,g = 1 iff
	∃t’ < t ∧ t’ ⊆ g(1) [∃e [thinkw,t’(e) ∧ Cont(e) = λw’.λt’. Badma broke the cart in w’ at some time t” that precedes t’ ∧ Exp(e) = Sajana]]

This sentence is true relative to a world w, a time t and an assignment function g if there is a time within a salient time interval which is in the past relative to t at which there is an event of Sajana thinking whose Content is ‘Badma broke the cart’.

This analysis of sentences with CPs straightforwardly captures the absence of the pre-existence presupposition in them: since the pre-existence presupposition is introduced by θ_Th, and CPs do not combine via θ_Th, no pre-existence presupposition is expected to occur in sentences with them. Hanaxa in sentences with CPs just means ‘think’. The CP specifies the Content of the thinking event, but nothing forces this Content of thoughts to be true in the actual world. Thus, the absence of the factive inference is predicted.

3.2 Hanaxa + NMN

3.2.2 The pre-existence presupposition

I would like to propose that hanaxa combines with nominal arguments via the functional head θ_Th, and that θ_Th is the source of the pre-existence presupposition. The argument that θ_Th introduces with hanaxa is interpreted as the topic of thoughts — an entity or event which the thinking event is about. The pre-existence presupposition places a restriction on this about-argument: the left boundary of the time interval corresponding to it is before the time at which hanaxa is evaluated. In (46) I show one possible entry for θ_Th that captures this, which is simplified in that the second argument of θ_Th is taken to be an individual rather than a predicate of individuals (which will be the final proposal). (47) demonstrates the LF of the VP.

(46)	(to be modified later)
	⟦θTh⟧w,t,g = λPet.λxe.λee: LB(τ(x)) < t. P(e) ∧ ABOUT(e) = x
	(where LB is ‘left boundary’; τ is a function which takes an individual and returns its time span;28 ABOUT is a function that takes an event with Content and returns its topic)

(47)

This functional head takes a predicate P, an individual x and returns a predicate of events such that P is true of them and they are in an ABOUT relation to x. I view the ABOUT relation as a theta-role, similar to theta-roles like ‘Agent’ and ‘Patient’. I leave the question of what exactly it means for an event to be about another event or entity open (see Rawlins 2013 for a recent proposal for semantics of the preposition about and Yablo 2014 for a discussion of aboutness from a philosophical perspective).

The important contribution of θ_Th is that in addition to introducing an argument and specifying its theta-role, it introduces a presupposition associated with this argument — LB(τ(x)) < t: the left boundary of an event or the starting point of an entity’s life span has to be before the matrix time. This presupposition is not a consequence of aboutness: i.e., the theta-relation that is being established between an event and an individual (in this case, ABOUT-relation) is potentially independent of this presupposition that requires a certain temporal ordering between the left boundary of an argument and the matrix time. A reason for thinking this is that, as we have seen in section 2.1, phrases with a postposition tuxai ‘about’, which also denote the topic of thoughts when they combine with hanaxa, do not exhibit such a presupposition:

1. (48)

1. Context: Seseg is not pregnant. But she really wants a baby and is planning to have one.

1.  
1. a.

1. #Sɘsɘg
2.   Seseg
1. gar-ga-x-a:
2. go.out-CAUS-POT-REFL
1. bai-ga:n
2. be-PFCT
1. üxibü-jɘ:
2. child-ACC.REFL
1. hana-na
2. think-PRS
1.   ‘Seseg remembers her future child.’
2.   (lit. ‘her child that will be caused to go out of her’)

1.  
1. b.

1.   Sɘsɘg
2.   Seseg
1. gar-ga-x-a:
2. go.out-CAUS-POT-REFL
1. bai-ga:n
2. be-PFCT
1. üxibü-n
2. child-NOM
1. tuxai-ga:
2. about-REFL
1. hana-na
2. think-PRS
1.   ‘Seseg thinks about her future child.’
2.   (lit. ‘her child that will be caused to go out of her’)

While NP ‘her future child’ in the object position of hanaxa is infelicitous in a context where it is common knowledge that Seseg does not have or bear a child yet, no infelicity arises when the same noun phrase combines via the postposition tuxai ‘about’. This suggests that the presupposition comes from the functional projection that introduces the internal argument, and not just from the fact that the argument is interpreted as the topic of thoughts.

A question that arises about the denotation in (46) is whether some verbs besides hanaxa combine with their internal arguments via θ_Th. To address this question, I need to make my assumptions about functional heads like θ_Th explicit. I assume that both roots and functional heads can be subject to allosemy (Marantz 2013; Wood & Marantz 2017), i.e., interpretation of heads can be conditioned by the environment in which they appear similar to how exponents of heads are sometimes conditioned by their environment (allomorphy). Both processes obey locality restrictions. For the present purposes, it is enough to assume that the sister of a head can trigger allosemy.

I propose that θ_Th is the functional head that introduces internal arguments of all verbs that take such arguments, but that its interpretation is subject to allosemy conditioned by the verb, which is the sister to θ_Th (47). Thus, the denotation of θ_Th has the following shape:

(49)	⟦θTh⟧w,t,g
	⟺ λPet.λxe.λee: LB(τ(x)) < t. P(e) ∧ ABOUT(e) = x /___
	⟺ λPet.λxe.λee: ¬(LB(τ(x)) < t). P(e) ∧ R(e) = x /
	(where R is some theta-role relation)
	⟺ …

To the right of each double arrow is the denotation that θ_Th will have provided that the context, which in this case is the verbal root that θ_Th combines with, is met. In the context of hanaxa, θ_Th’s denotation will be as in (46). In context of other verbs it could have different denotations. For example, perhaps verbs like write, create, invent, imagine create a context in which θ_Th assigns a different theta-role to the internal argument and has an opposite presupposition, i.e., a presupposition that the left boundary of the internal argument is not before the matrix time.²⁹

Within Buryat, I think there are at least two other verbs which could be candidates for creating the same environment as hanaxa does for interpretation of θ_Th. These are verbs du:laxa ‘hear’ and xɘlɘxɘ ‘say’,³⁰ which are non-factive when they combine with CPs. When they combine with nominalized clauses, these NMNs denote the topic of what has been heard or said, and the resulting sentences exhibit factive presuppositions:

1. (50)
1. a.

1. Sajana
2. Sajana
1. Dugar-ha:
2. Dugar-ABL
1. Badm-i:n
2. Badma-GEN
1. tɘrgɘ
2. cart
1. ɘmdɘl-ɘ:∫-i:jɘ
2. break-PART-ACC
1. du:l-a:
2. hear-PST
1. ‘Sajana heard from Dugar about Badma’s breaking the cart.’
2. ✓ Context A: Badma broke the cart, and Dugar told Sajana about it.
3. # Context B: Badma didn’t break the cart. Dugar lied to Sajana that he did.

1.  
1. b.

1. # …
2.  
1. xarin
2. but
1. Badma
2. Badma
1. tɘrgɘ
2. cart
1. ɘmdɘl-ɘ:-güi
2. break-PST-NEG
1. ‘But Badma didn’t break the cart.’

1. (51)
1. a.

1. Sajana
2. Sajana
1. Sɘsɘg-ɘi
2. Seseg-GEN
1. xada
2. mountain
1. dɘ:rɘ
2. to
1. gar-a:∫-i:jɘ
2. go-PART-ACC
1. xɘl-ɘ:
2. say-PST
1. ‘Sajana said (something) about Seseg’s going up the mountain.’
2. ✓ Context A: Seseg went up the mountain.
3. # Context B: Seseg didn’t go up the mountain.

1.  
1. b.

1. #…
2.  
1. xarin
2. but
1. Sɘsɘg
2. Seseg
1. xada
2. mountain
1. dɘ:rɘ
2. to
1. gar-a:-güi
2. go-PST-NEG
1. ‘But Seseg didn’t go up the mountain.’

Sentences (50a) and (51a) are incompatible with contexts in which an event described by the NMN does not exist in the actual world. This is corroborated by the impossibility of the continuations of (50b) and (51b) respectively. The question whether the temporal component of the presupposition is present with these verbs as well requires further investigation.³¹

I expect that other languages could also have allosemes for θ_Th similar to the one we see with hanaxa in Barguzin Buryat, leading to factive inferences with clausal complements (see section 4.3 for some potential candidates cross-linguistically). But more importantly, the proposal advanced in this paper gives rise to a more general expectation that presuppositions of attitude verbs could stem from presuppositions of argument-introducing heads, whatever those might be.

3.2.3 Existential quantifier from θ_Th

In this section, I develop an implementation of my proposal and address the question of how the pre-existence presupposition projects. I focus on indefinite readings of nominalized expressions in order to guarantee that the pre-existence presupposition is derived with them as well. The general question of presupposition projection from quantificational sentences is an ongoing debate (Heim 1983; Beaver 2001; Chierchia 1995; Chemla 2009; Charlow 2009; Fox 2013). While contributing to this discussion is not a goal of this paper, I would nevertheless like to provide an account of how the pre-existence presupposition of hanaxa functions in sentences with indefinite complements in Barguzin Buryat. For example, I would like my analysis to capture that the pre-existence inference survives in sentences with negation, as we have seen in (15), repeated here as (52).

1. (52)

1.   Context: The speaker wants to convey that Sajana’s thoughts are consistent with reality.

1.  

1. #[Badm-i:n
2.   Badma-GEN
1. tɘrgɘ
2. cart
1. ɘmdɘl-ɘ:∫-i:jɘ]
2. break-PART-ACC
1. Sajana
2. Sajana.NOM
1. han-a:-güi,
2. think-PST-NEG
1. Badma
2. Badma.NOM
1. tɘrgɘ
2. cart
1. ɘmdɘl-ɘ:-güi
2. break-PST-NEG
1.   Intended: ‘Sajana didn’t think/remember that Badma broke the cart, (and) Badma didn’t break the cart.’

Nominalized clauses are bare noun phrases, and I will assume that they are predicates of events of type <e,t>. I propose that the existential quantifier corresponding to the indefinite does not combine with the NMN directly (see appendix B in the supplementary materials for some issues with such a view), but is introduced by θ_Th when it combines with hanaxa.³² Under this approach, the nominalized expression itself is not a quantificational phrase.

The LF for the sentence with a NMN, (53), is shown in (54).

1. (53)

1. Sajana
2. Sajana.NOM
1. [Badm-i:n
2. Badma-GEN
1. tɘrgɘ
2. cart
1. ɘmdɘl-ɘ:∫-i:jɘ-(n’)]
2. break-PART-ACC-(3)
1. han-a:
2. think-PST
1. ‘Sajana remembered that Badma broke the cart.’

(54)

I assume the standard view that presuppositions are encoded as partial functions (Frege 1892), and therefore, the semantics that I am using is trivalent. More concretely, following Karttunen & Peters (1979), George (2008b; a; 2014), Fox (2013), I make use of Kleene logic to track how presuppositions project.³³

In the light of the foregoing, the final meaning of θ_Th when it combines with hanaxa is in (55).

(55)	⟦θTh⟧w,t,g = λPet.λQet.λee: ∃x[Q(x) ∧ LB(τ(x)) < t]. ∃x[Q(x) ∧ LB(τ(x)) < t ∧ P(e) ∧ ABOUT(e) = x].

The nominalized clause, (40), which is a predicate of events, is able to directly combine with θ_Th as its second argument. The fact that θ_Th takes the extension of the NMN as its argument means that the nominalized expression will be interpreted in the same world in which hanaxa is evaluated. The existential quantifier in θ_Th’s denotation binds the event argument of the NMN and also places a restriction that the left boundary of that event has to precede the matrix time. This is the pre-existence presupposition.

Note that the presuppositional component in this case is repeated in the assertion. This is just a way to write the truth-conditions that are more explicitly stated in (56).³⁴

(56)

As the denotation in (56) shows, I assume a theory with three truth-values: 1 (true), 0 (false) and # (undefined). The sentences are undefined just in case they are neither true nor false. Thus, the presupposition of a given expression is a disjunction of the condition which makes it true and the condition which makes it false. Trivalent logic (strong Kleene logic) provides a general recipe for transforming bivalent semantic values to trivalent ones. Imagine that we have a complex sentence which contains an expression α that receives the third value (#). The main idea of the strong Kleene approach is that the truth value of the complex sentence will be 1 iff all the ways of assigning bivalent truth values to α will make it true; it will be 0 iff all the ways of assigning bivalent truth values to α will make it false; and it will be # otherwise. In other words, # represents uncertainty about which value, 1 or 0, a certain expression has. This uncertainty projects only if it matters for the calculation of the bivalent truth values for the bigger structure.

(56) ensures that ∃x[Q(x) ∧ LB(τ(x)) < t] is the definedness condition by requiring it to be true both for the sentence to be true and for the sentence to be false. θ_Th combines then with the verb (= the first argument P), with the nominalized clause (= the second argument Q), with the Voice head and the external argument, resulting in the denotation for VoiceP in (57).

(57)

This VoiceP combines with the existential closure, (58), which, being existential quantifier, has a disjunctive presupposition.³⁵

(58)	⟦∃⟧w,t,g = λPet: ∃e[P(e) = 1] ∨ ∀e[P(e) = 0]. ∃e[P(e) = 1]

This, when simplified, results in (59).³⁶

(59)

Finally, the proposition in (59) is combined with the contextually restricted tense, (60), by Intensional Functional Application, resulting in (61).

(60)

(61)

(61) states that the sentence is true iff there exists some past time interval t’ within a contextually salient time and there exist events e and e’ such that e’ is Badma’s breaking the cart and e is an event of Sajana thinking about e’, and the left boundary of e’ is before t’. This is the right meaning.

(61) also gives the correct falsity condition: in order for it to be met there needs to exist an event denoted by the NMN such that its left boundary is before all times within the contextually given past time interval. This means that if the pre-existence requirement is not met, the sentence will receive the third value (#), and thus be a presupposition failure.³⁷

To sum up, we have seen that treating the nominalized expression as a predicate of events and having the existential quantifier introduced by θ_Th predicts the attested projection behavior of the pre-existence presupposition, (16), repeated here as (62).

(62)	Projected inference:
	There is a NMN-event in the world at which hanaxa is evaluated that started before the time at which hanaxa is evaluated.

However, this implementation raises the question of how θ_Th, when it combines with hanaxa, takes individuals like proper names (see ‘Badma’ in (8)) as its arguments, which I assume to denote entities and not functions that characterize sets of entities. I propose that DPs like ‘Badma’ are shifted to predicates by an operator like IDENT (Partee 1986) in order to combine with θ_Th in the context of hanaxa. After that, the composition proceeds in the same way as with the NMN: the result of combining θ_Th with hanaxa takes the property of individuals λx [x = Badma] as its argument and states that there exists an individual of this kind whose left boundary (= beginning of the life span) is before the matrix time.

This analysis of the factivity alternation shares some similarity to the proposal in (Özyıldız 2017a) for a factivity alternation in Turkish, for which the res/about argument of the attitude verb and semantic composition play an important role in generating the factive inference as well. Beyond that however, these two approaches are quite different. Özyıldız (2017a) analyzes Turkish nominalized expressions as denoting propositions, something that is implausible for Buryat, given the evidence that participle-based NMNs cannot describe beliefs of attitude holders in this language (see section 3.2.1). Özyıldız (2017a) derives the factive reading by hypothesizing that nominalized clauses undergo movement, and the binder created in this movement binds not only the trace of the NMN, but also a situation-denoting pronoun that is part of the covert definite description that is the res-argument of the attitude verb. Thus, as he himself points out, his proposal is in line with approaches which derive factivity from definiteness, with the difference that nominalized clauses do not directly compose with the ι-operator. Given that Buryat NMNs allow indefinite readings (see (19) in section 2.3), it is difficult to see how Özyıldız’s proposal could be extended to the Buryat factivity alternation.

4.1 Nominalized CPs

I have argued above that participle-based nominalized clauses like (2a) do not specify Content of events that are in their characteristic set. Barguzin Buryat also has a different kind of nominalized expressions: nominalized CPs (63).³⁸

The NMN in (63) involves a finite clause under the complementizer g-ɘ:∫ɘ, which consists of the root gɘ ‘say’ and participial suffix -A:∫A. Unlike gɘžɘ-CPs, nominalized CPs like (63) have nominal morphology (case, optional possessive markers) and the syntactic distribution of NPs. Given that under my proposal complementizers introduce Content relations, our expectation is that the nominalized CP in (63) is a predicate of entities like claim/rumor/thought with Content ‘Badma read a book yesterday’:

Thus I make a prediction that when a NMN like (63) is an object of hanaxa, there should be no factive inference that an event of the kind described by the clause under g-ɘ:∫ɘ (Badma’s reading a book yesterday) exists in the actual world. This is so because an event of the embedded proposition is not itself an object of hanaxa. This prediction is borne out:

The absence of a factive inference here is not surprising under my proposal. I assume that (64), just like other noun phrases, combines as the second argument of θ_Th. The pre-existence presupposition introduced by θ_Th is still present in (65), but since θ_Th’s argument is a predicate of individuals with Content ‘The cat ate the fish’, it presupposes that an individual with this propositional Content pre-exists the matrix time rather than that an event of the cat eating fish pre-exists the matrix time.

This presupposition about the existence of an argument with Content is illustrated in (66): in a context where Dugar was the first person to think that the cat ate the fish, (66) is infelicitous.

To sum up, the pre-existence presupposition is observed with all nominalized clauses, which combine with hanaxa via the θ_Th projection. The pre-existence presupposition will lead to a factive inference only if the nominalized expression denotes a predicate of events of the kind described by the embedded predicate, but not if it denotes a predicate of individuals whose Content is the embedded proposition.

4.2 NMNs with a future/modal morpheme -xa

Another prediction that the current proposal makes is that combining hanaxa with a nominalized clause based on a participle that sets the left boundary of the NMN-event after the matrix time should result in presupposition failure. This is so because the presupposition introduced by θ_Th in (55), repeated in (67), explicitly states that the left boundary of the NMN-event should precede the matrix time.

Testing this prediction turns out to be quite complicated. The main issue is that we need to find a morpheme that indeed sets the left boundary of an eventuality after the matrix time, and it is not obvious that a morpheme with exactly such meaning exists in Barguzin Buryat. The best candidate is the morpheme -xA (POT), which can describe future eventualities when it occurs in finite forms:

In addition to future reference, xa seems to express modal meanings, as can be seen in the following sentence from (Skribnik & Darzhaeva 2016):

When -xA (POT) occurs in embedded contexts, its interpretation is often not identical to its finite uses, and seems to depend on a number of factors, among which are the meaning of the matrix verb, the type of the embedded clause, aspectual class of the embedded eventuality. A thorough investigation of -xA (POT) in embedded contexts would be necessary to properly understand the combination of xA-NMNs with hanaxa, which is beyond the scope of this paper. Here I only present some initial observations related to this issue.

Consider the sentence in (70), in which hanaxa combines with a nominalized clause based on the -xA participle.

The interpretation corresponding to context A seems to be the most prominent one, which is surprising given how xA-forms are interpreted in finite sentences, (68)–(69). One could hypothesize that the pre-existence presupposition introduced by hanaxa somehow is able to override the semantic contribution of xA, but what kind of mechanism would be responsible for that is unclear.³⁹

The second interpretation requires more support from the context, but seems to be generally available. When (70) is uttered in context B, the eventuality of buying three bottles of milk is in the future with respect to the matrix time, and what is being remembered, it seems, is the plan to buy three bottles of milk. As two anonymous reviewers point out, this pattern is similar to English remember, which when taking a future-oriented complement, also requires that there is a plan in place already at the time of the remembering.⁴⁰

Does the existence of such an interpretation for the xA-NMN with hanaxa pose a problem for my proposal about the pre-existence presupposition? It seems impossible to answer this question without an understanding of how (and why) the “planned eventuality” reading comes about. Given that the idea that a plan for an event can constitute an early stage of the event has been entertained the literature (Dowty 1979; Cipria & Roberts 2000), it could be that the shift observed in the meaning of the nominalized clause is happening in order to satisfy hanaxa’s pre-existence presupposition.

While the question of why a plan could count as an early stage of an event is beyond the scope of this paper (see Copley 2008; 2014 for discussion of this issue in light of futurates), I would like to provide some evidence that it is indeed the plan, and not the event itself, that xA-NMNs denote when they combine with hanaxa. Consider (72).

In this example the speaker doesn’t think that Badma will buy meat at a future time, but the use of a xA-NMN with hanaxa is still acceptable, and what the speaker recalls is Badma’s plan to buy meat.

A similiar point is illustrated in (73), where the speaker recalls Dugar’s obligation, which they know he will not fulfill.

I would like to tentatively suggest that in cases like (72) and (73) the pre-existence presupposition applies to the modal statement that xA introduces: e.g., in (73) it is the necessity for Dugar to return next week which pre-exists the matrix time. Further research is necessary to test this hypothesis.

4.3 Beyond Buryat

One implication of my proposal is that some factivity inferences that we observe in sentences with attitude verbs are reducible to restrictions that predicates place on their internal arguments. This facilitates a view that unifies attitude verbs and predicates of events without propositional Content: both can presuppose that there is an individual described by their internal argument that pre-exists the event described by them. When the internal argument is a predicate of events, we get a factive inference.

Support for this view comes from languages which use non-attitude verbs in order to describe attitudes: we see that the restrictions these verbs place on their arguments carry over into their attitudinal uses. I will briefly discuss three such cases from different languages: Balkar (Turkic), Russian and Bangla (from Banerjee et al. 2019).⁴¹

Here is an example of this from Balkar.⁴² The verb ‘drop’ (‘cause to fall’) requires that its direct object pre-exists the dropping (74). When what is being dropped is an event (denoted by the nominalized clause) and the location of the dropping is one’s memory, we arrive at an attitude report meaning ‘remember’ (75). Naturally, this attitude report has a factive inference: there has to exist an event of Fatima winning the contest.

Thus, it seems that the pre-existence requirement that we see in (74) with respect to the internal argument of ‘drop’ is retained when the internal argument is an event-denoting nominalized expression and the resulting meaning is that of an attitude report.⁴³

Here is another example. Russian verb vyletet’ ‘fly out’, which seems to presuppose that an individual flying out was in the specified location prior to flying, can occur with a PP ‘out of head’ and a CP clause, and a factive attitude report meaning ‘forget’ is created in such cases (76).⁴⁴

Banerjee et al. (2019) and Banerjee & Karmakar (2020) discuss attitude reports in Bangla that are built from the preverb mone ‘in mind’ and different light verbs. They observe that the properties of the light verb play a crucial role in whether the attitude report has a factive inference. For example, the object of the verb fall, as opposed to the object of happen, has to exist before the matrix time. When these verbs are used for creating attitude reports, the former exhibits factive inferences, while the latter does not.

Banerjee et al. (2019) conclude that “it is the semantics of ‘mind-predicates’ which is crucial to impose (non)presuppositionality…”.⁴⁵ I agree with this conclusion: the argument structure of embedding verbs, in particular the presuppositions associated with their internal arguments, is what stands behind (at least some, but potentially all) factive inferences.⁴⁶

While it is beyond the scope of this paper to conclude whether examples like (75), (76), and (77) all indeed involve the same alloseme of θ_Th which introduces a pre-existence presupposition, these examples suggest that natural languages widely make use of non-attitude verbs for constructing attitudinal meanings, and the inferences we get from sentences with clausal complements seem to parallel those that are present in sentences with nominal ones. I take this as tentative evidence that argument-introducing heads could be responsible for creating factive inferences cross-linguistically.