Obligatory implicatures and the presupposition of “too”

Abstract

The paper provides an analysis for the obligatory occurence of the presupposition triggers “too”, “again” and “know”. The claim is that these triggers are inserted to avoid a mandatory exhaustivity implicature that contradicts the context. Two main empirical arguments for why this account is to be preferred over analyses of these obligatory triggers that make use of a principle Maximize Presupposition will be presented.