Semantics week 11

LING2100

What is a presupposition?

A background assumption that must be true for an utterance to be appropriate or felicitous.

Example:

‘John’s brother is tall’ presupposes John has a brother.

How does presupposition differ from entailment?

Entailment: if sentence A is true, B must be true

Presupposition: A assumes B is true, but A can be true or false and still presuppose B.

Also: presuppositions survive negation.

What does it mean that presuppositions ‘project’?

They remain intact even under negation, questioning, or embedding.

Example:

‘Mary stopped smoking’

‘Mary didnt stop smoking’

→ both presuppose: Mary used to smoke.

What are some common tests for presupposition?

1) Negation test

2) Question test

3) conditional test

If the assumption survives all of these, it’s likely a presupposition.

What is the negation test for presupposition?

If both a sentence and its negation assume the same background information, that information is likely a presupposition.

Example:

‘Paul knows that the exam was hard’

‘Paul doesn’t know that the exam was hard’

→ Presuppose: The exam was hard

What is a presupposition trigger?

A lexical item or construction that introduces a presupposition.

Examples:

Verbs: know, stop, regret, continue

Particles: too, again

Clefts: It was John who left

What are factive verbs and why do they matter?

Factive verbs (e.g., know, realise, regret) presuppose the truth of their complement clause.

e.g., ‘Anna regrets going’ → Presupposes Anna went.

What does ‘stop’ presuppose?

It presupposes the subject used to do the activity.

e.g., ‘she stopped singing’ → presupposes she used to sing

What does ‘too’ presuppose?

That the relevant property applies to someone else besides the subject.

‘Alex came too’ → presupposes someone else came.

What is a presupposition failure?

When a presupposed proposition is not part of the common ground, leading to infelicity

e.g., ‘my brother is a doctor’ (said when the speaker has no brother)

What is presupposition accommodation?

When the listener adjust the context to accept a presupposition.

e.g., ‘I have to pick up my cousin from the airport’

→ Hearer accommodates: You have a cousin.

What is the projection problem?

The issue of predicting whether a presupposition survives embedding under logical operators (negation, conditionals, modals, etc)

How do presuppositions behave in conditionals?

Presuppositons often project out of conditionals:

‘if I regret yelling at you, i’m sorry’

→ presupposes I yelled at you.

But this can be cancelled contextually.

What is the satisfaction theory of presupposition?

A formal theory (Heim 1983) where presuppositions are conditions on definiteness:

• An expression is undefined unless its presuppositions are satisfied in the context. Presuppositions must be satisfied at the point of evaluation.

What is the filtering effect of negation?

Negation typically does not cancel presuppositions - it ‘filters’ entailment but allows presuppositions to project.