Presupposition

For other uses, seePresupposition (disambiguation).

Inlinguisticsandphilosophy,apresuppositionis animplicit assumptionabout the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted indiscourse.Examples of presuppositions include:

• Jane no longer writes fiction.
  • Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction.
• Have you stopped eating meat?
  • Presupposition: you had once eaten meat.
• Have you talked to Hans?
  • Presupposition: Hans exists.

A presupposition is information that is linguistically presented as being mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context. A presupposition remains as such whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specificlexical itemor grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.

Crucially,negationof an expression does not change its presuppositions:I want to do it againandI don't want to do it againboth presuppose that the subject has done it already one or more times;My wife is pregnantandMy wife is not pregnantboth presuppose that the subject has a wife. In this respect, presupposition is distinguished fromentailmentandimplicature.For example,The president was assassinatedentails thatThe president is dead,but if the expression is negated, theentailmentis notnecessarily true.

Negation of a sentence containing a presupposition

If presuppositions of a sentence are not consistent with the actual state of affairs, then one of two approaches can be taken. Given the sentencesMy wife is pregnantandMy wife is not pregnantwhen one has no wife, then either:

1. Both the sentence and its negation are false; or
2. Strawson'sapproach: Both "my wife is pregnant" and "my wife is not pregnant" use a wrong presupposition (i.e. that there exists areferentwhich can be described with the noun phrasemy wife) and therefore can not be assignedtruth values.

Bertrand Russelltries to solve this dilemma with two interpretations of the negated sentence:

1. "There exists exactly one person, who is my wife and who is not pregnant"
2. "There does not exist exactly one person, who is my wife and who is pregnant."

For the first phrase, Russell would claim that it is false, whereas the second would be true according to him.

Projection of presuppositions

A presupposition of a part of an utterance is sometimes also a presupposition of the whole utterance, and sometimes not. For instance, the phrasemy wifetriggers the presupposition that I have a wife. The first sentence below carries that presupposition, even though the phrase occurs inside an embeddedclause.In the second sentence, however, it does not. John might be mistaken about his belief that I have a wife, or he might be deliberately trying to misinform his audience, and this has an effect on the meaning of the second sentence, but, perhaps surprisingly, not on the first one.

1. John thinks thatmy wifeis beautiful.
2. John said thatmy wifeis beautiful.

Thus, this seems to be a property of the main verbs of the sentences,thinkandsay,respectively. After work byLauri Karttunen,verbs that allow presuppositions to "pass up" to the whole sentence ( "project" ) are calledholes,and verbs that block such passing up, orprojectionof presuppositions are calledplugs.Some linguistic environments are intermediate between plugs and holes: They block some presuppositions and allow others to project. These are calledfilters.An example of such an environment areindicative conditionals( "If-then" clauses). A conditional sentence contains anantecedentand aconsequent.The antecedent is the part preceded by the word "if," and the consequent is the part that is (or could be) preceded by "then." If the consequent contains a presupposition trigger, and the triggered presupposition is explicitly stated in the antecedent of the conditional, then the presupposition is blocked. Otherwise, it is allowed to project up to the entire conditional. Here is an example:

IfI have a wife,thenmy wifeis blonde.

Here, the presupposition (that I have a wife) triggered by the expressionmy wifeis blocked, because it is stated in the antecedent of the conditional: That sentence doesn't imply that I have a wife. In the following example, it is not stated in the antecedent, so it is allowed to project, i.e. the sentencedoesimply that I have a wife.

If it's already 4am, thenmy wifeis probably angry.

Hence, conditional sentences act asfiltersfor presuppositions that are triggered by expressions in their consequent.

A significant amount of current work insemanticsandpragmaticsis devoted to a proper understanding of when and how presuppositions project.

Presupposition triggers

A presupposition trigger is a lexical item or linguistic construction which is responsible for the presupposition, and thus "triggers" it.The following is a selection of presuppositional triggers followingStephen C. Levinson's classic textbook onPragmatics,which in turn draws on a list produced byLauri Karttunen.As is customary, the presuppositional triggers themselves are italicized, and the symbol » stands for 'presupposes'.

Definite descriptions

Main article:Definite description

Definite descriptions are phrases of the form "the X" where X represents a noun phrase. The description is said to beproperwhen the phrase applies to exactly one object, and conversely, it is said to beimproperwhen either there exist more than one potential referents, as in "the senator from Ohio", or none at all, as in "the king of France". In conventional speech, definite descriptions are implicitly assumed to be proper, hence such phrases trigger the presupposition that the referent is unique and existent.

• John sawthe man with two heads.
  »there exists a man with two heads.

Factive verbs

See also:Epistemology § Truth

In Western epistemology, there is a tradition originating withPlatoof defining knowledge as justified true belief. On this definition, for someone to know X, it is required that X be true. A linguistic question thus arises regarding the usage of such phrases: does a person who states "John knows X" implicitly claim the truth of X?Steven Pinkerexplored this question in apopular scienceformat in a 2007 book on language and cognition, using a widely publicized example from a speech by a U.S. president.A 2003 speech by George W. Bush included the line, "British Intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."Over the next few years, it became apparent that this intelligence lead was incorrect. But the way the speech was phrased, using a factive verb, implicitly framed the lead as truth rather than hypothesis. There is however a strong alternative view thatfactivity thesis,the proposition that relational predicates having to do with knowledge, such asknows, learn, remembers,andrealized,presuppose the factual truth of their object, is incorrect.

• Martharegretsdrinking John's home brew.
  • Presupposition: Martha did in fact drink John's home brew.
• Frankenstein wasawarethat Dracula was there.
  • Presupposition: Dracula was in fact there.
• Johnrealizedthat he was in debt.
  • Presupposition: John was in fact in debt.
• It wasoddhow proud he was.
  • Presupposition: He was in fact proud.

Some further factive predicates:know; be sorry that; be proud that; be indifferent that; be glad that; be sad that.

Implicative verbs

• Johnmanagedto open the door.
  »John tried to open the door.
• Johnforgotto lock the door.
  »John ought to have locked, or intended to lock, the door.

Some further implicative predicates:X happened to V»X didn't plan or intend toV;X avoided Ving»X was expected to, or usually did, or ought toV,etc.

Change of state or continuation of state verbs

With these presupposition triggers, the current unfolding situation is considered presupposed information.

• Johnstoppedteasing his wife.
  »John had been teasing his wife.
• Joanbeganteasing her husband.
  »Joan hadn't been teasing her husband.

Some further change of state verbs:start; finish; carry on; cease; take(as inX took Y from Z» Y was at/in/with Z);leave; enter; come; go; arrive;etc.

Iteratives

These types of triggers presuppose the existence of a previous state of affairs.

• The flying saucer cameagain.
  »The flying saucer came before.
• You can't get gobstoppersanymore.
  »You once could get gobstoppers.
• Carterreturnedto power.
  »Carter held power before.

Further iteratives:another time; to come back; restore; repeat; for the nth time.

Temporal clauses

The situation explained in a clause that begins with a temporal clause constructor is typically considered backgrounded information.

• BeforeStrawson was even born, Frege noticed presuppositions.
  »Strawson was born.
• WhileChomsky was revolutionizing linguistics, the rest of social science was asleep.
  »Chomsky was revolutionizing linguistics.
• SinceChurchill died, we've lacked a leader.
  »Churchill died.

Further temporal clause constructors:after; during; whenever; as(as inAs John was getting up, he slipped).

Cleft sentences

Cleft sentence structures highlight particular aspects of a sentence and consider the surrounding information to be backgrounded knowledge. These sentences are typically not spoken to strangers, but rather to addressees who are aware of the ongoing situation.

• Cleft construction:It was Henry that kissed Rosie.
  »Someone kissed Rosie.
• Pseudo-cleft construction:What John lost was his wallet.
  »John lost something.

Comparisons and contrasts

Comparisons and contrasts may be marked by stress (or by other prosodic means), by particles like "too", or by comparatives constructions.

• Marianne called Adolph a male chauvinist, and thenHEinsultedHER.
  »For Marianne to call Adolph a male chauvinist would be to insult him.
• Carolis a better linguist thanBarbara.
  »Barbara is a linguist.

Counterfactual conditionals

• Ifthe noticehadonlysaid'mine-field' in Welsh as well as in English, wewouldneverhave lostpoor Llewellyn.
  »The notice didn't say 'mine-field' in Welsh.

Questions

Questions often presuppose what the assertive part of the question presupposes, but interrogative parts might introduce further presuppositions. There are three different types of questions: yes/no questions, alternative questions and WH-questions.

• Is therea professor of linguistics at MIT?
  »Either there is a professor of linguistics at MIT or there isn't.
• IsNewcastle in Englandorin Australia?
  »Newcastle is in England or Newcastle is in Australia.
• Who isthe professor of linguistics at MIT?
  »Someone is the professor of linguistics at MIT.

Possessive case

• John'schildren are very noisy.
  »John has children.

Accommodation of presuppositions

A presupposition of a sentence must normally be part of thecommon groundof the utterance context (the shared knowledge of theinterlocutors) in order for the sentence to be felicitous. Sometimes, however, sentences may carry presuppositions that are not part of the common ground and nevertheless be felicitous. For example, I can, upon being introduced to someone, out of the blue explain thatmy wife is a dentist,this without my addressee having ever heard, or having any reason to believe that I have a wife. In order to be able to interpret my utterance, the addressee must assume that I have a wife. This process of an addressee assuming that a presupposition is true, even in the absence of explicit information that it is, is usually calledpresupposition accommodation.We have just seen that presupposition triggers likemy wife(definite descriptions) allow for such accommodation. In "Presupposition and Anaphora: Remarks on the Formulation of the Projection Problem",the philosopherSaul Kripkenoted that some presupposition triggers do not seem to permit such accommodation. An example of that is the presupposition triggertoo.This word triggers the presupposition that, roughly, something parallel to what is stated has happened. For example, if pronounced with emphasis onJohn,the following sentence triggers the presupposition that somebody other than John had dinner in New York last night.

John had dinner in New York last night, too.

But that presupposition, as stated, is completely trivial, given what we know about New York. Several million people had dinner in New York last night, and that in itself doesn't satisfy the presupposition of the sentence. What is needed for the sentence to be felicitous is really that somebody relevant to the interlocutors had dinner in New York last night, and that this has been mentioned in the previous discourse, or that this information can be recovered from it. Presupposition triggers that disallow accommodation are calledanaphoricpresupposition triggers.

Presupposition in critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis(CDA) is a broad study belonging to not one research category. It focuses on identifying presuppositions of an abstract nature from varying perspectives. CDA is considered critical, not only in the sense of being analytical, but also in the ideological sense. Through the analysis of written texts and verbal speech,Teun A. van Dijk(2003) says CDA studies power imbalances existing in both the conversational and political spectrum.With the purpose of first identifying and then tackling inequality in society, van Dijk describes CDA as a nonconformist piece of work.One notable feature of ideological presuppositions researched in CDA is a concept termedsynthetic personalisation

Logical construct

To describe apresuppositionin the context ofpropositional calculusandtruth-bearers,Belnapdefines "Asentenceis apresuppositionof a question if the truth of the sentence is a necessary condition of the question's having some true answer. "Then referring to thesemantic theory of truth,interpretationsare used to formulate apresupposition:"Every interpretation which makes the question truly answerable is an interpretation which makes the presupposed sentence true as well."

A sentence thatexpresses a presuppositionin a question may becharacterizedas follows: the question has some true answer if and only if the sentence is true.

See also

• Common ground
• Conversational scoreboard
• Context (linguistics)
• Double-barreled question
• Dynamic semantics
• Fallacy of many questions
• Intertextuality
• Loaded question
• Performative contradiction
• Speech act
• Strawson entailment

Further reading

• Beaver, David.1997. Presupposition. In J. van Benthem andA. ter Meulen(eds.),The Handbook of Logic and Language,Elsevier, pp. 939–1008.
• Henk Zeevat.2007. Accommodation. In Ramchand, G. and C. Reiss (eds.),The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces,Oxford University Press.pp. 503–538.

External links

• Geurts, Bart."Presupposition".InZalta, Edward N.(ed.).Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.