Presupposition
Encyclopedia
In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics
, a presupposition (or ps) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse
. Examples of presuppositions include:
A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context. It will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.
Crucially, negation
of an expression does not change its presuppositions: I want to do it again and I don't want to do it again both presuppose that the subject has done it already one or more times; My wife is pregnant and My wife is not pregnant both presuppose that the subject has a wife. In this respect, presupposition is distinguished from entailment
and implicature
. For example, The president was assassinated entails that The president is dead, but if the expression is negated, the entailment
is not necessarily true.
Bertrand Russell
tries to solve this dilemma with two interpretations of the negated sentence:
For the first phrase, Russell would claim that it is false, whereas the second would be true according to him.
Thus, this seems to be a property of the main verbs of the sentences, think and say, respectively. After work by Lauri Karttunen, verbs that allow presuppositions to "pass up" to the whole sentence ("project") are called holes, and verbs that block such passing up, or projection of presuppositions are called plugs. Some linguistic environments are intermediate between plugs and holes: They block some presuppositions and allow others to project. These are called filters. An example of such an environment are indicative conditional
s ("If-then" clauses). A conditional sentence contains an antecedent and a consequent. 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:
Here, the presupposition triggered by the expression my wife (that I have a wife) is 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 sentence does imply that I have a wife.
Hence, conditional sentences act as filters for presuppositions that are triggered by expressions in their consequent.
A significant amount of current work in semantics
and pragmatics is devoted to a proper understanding of when and how presuppositions project.
's classic textbook on Pragmatics, which in turn draws on a list produced by Lauri Karttunen. As is customary, the presuppositional triggers themselves are italicized, and the symbol » stands for ‘presupposes’.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...
, a presupposition (or ps) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
. Examples of presuppositions include:
- Do you want to do it again?
- Presupposition: that you have done it already, at least once.
- Jane no longer writes fiction.
- Presupposition: that Jane once wrote fiction.
A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context. It will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.
Crucially, negation
Negation
In logic and mathematics, negation, also called logical complement, is an operation on propositions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. Intuitively, the negation of a proposition is true when that proposition is false, and vice versa. In classical logic negation is normally identified...
of an expression does not change its presuppositions: I want to do it again and I don't want to do it again both presuppose that the subject has done it already one or more times; My wife is pregnant and My wife is not pregnant both presuppose that the subject has a wife. In this respect, presupposition is distinguished from entailment
Entailment (pragmatics)
In pragmatics , entailment is the relationship between two sentences where the truth of one requires the truth of the other ....
and implicature
Implicature
Implicature is a technical term in the pragmatics subfield of linguistics, coined by H. P. Grice, which refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even though neither expressed nor strictly implied by the utterance...
. For example, The president was assassinated entails that The president is dead, but if the expression is negated, the entailment
Entailment
In logic, entailment is a relation between a set of sentences and a sentence. Let Γ be a set of one or more sentences; let S1 be the conjunction of the elements of Γ, and let S2 be a sentence: then, Γ entails S2 if and only if S1 and not-S2 are logically inconsistent...
is not necessarily 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 sentences My wife is pregnant and My wife is not pregnant when one has no wife, then either:- Both the sentence and its negation are false; or
- Strawson'sP. F. StrawsonSir Peter Frederick Strawson FBA was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1968 to 1987. Before that he was appointed as a college lecturer at University College, Oxford in 1947 and became a tutorial fellow the...
approach: Both "my wife is pregnant" and "my wife is not pregnant" use a wrong presupposition (i.e. that there exists a referent which can be described with the noun phrase my wife) and therefore can not be assigned truth values.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
tries to solve this dilemma with two interpretations of the negated sentence:
- "There exists exactly one person, who is my wife and who is not pregnant"
- "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. We've seen that the phrase my wife triggers the presupposition that I have a wife. The first sentence below carries that presupposition, even though the phrase occurs inside an embedded clause. 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.- John thinks that my wife is beautiful.
- John said that my wife is beautiful.
Thus, this seems to be a property of the main verbs of the sentences, think and say, respectively. After work by Lauri Karttunen, verbs that allow presuppositions to "pass up" to the whole sentence ("project") are called holes, and verbs that block such passing up, or projection of presuppositions are called plugs. Some linguistic environments are intermediate between plugs and holes: They block some presuppositions and allow others to project. These are called filters. An example of such an environment are indicative conditional
Indicative conditional
In natural languages, an indicative conditional is the logical operation given by statements of the form "If A then B". Unlike the material conditional, an indicative conditional does not have a stipulated definition...
s ("If-then" clauses). A conditional sentence contains an antecedent and a consequent. 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:
- If I have a wife, then my wife is blonde.
Here, the presupposition triggered by the expression my wife (that I have a wife) is 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 sentence does imply that I have a wife.
- If it's already 4am, then my wife is probably angry.
Hence, conditional sentences act as filters for presuppositions that are triggered by expressions in their consequent.
A significant amount of current work in semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
and pragmatics is 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. The following is a selection of presuppositional triggers following Stephen C. LevinsonStephen C. Levinson
Stephen C. Levinson is one of the scientific directors of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He received a BA in Archaeology and Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and received a PhD in Linguistic Anthropology from the University of...
's classic textbook on Pragmatics, which in turn draws on a list produced by Lauri Karttunen. As is customary, the presuppositional triggers themselves are italicized, and the symbol » stands for ‘presupposes’.
Definite descriptions
Definite descriptions are phrases of the form "the X" where X is a noun phrase. The description is said to be proper when the phrase applies to exactly one object, and conversely, it is said to be improper when 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 saw the man with two heads. »there exists a man with two heads.
Factive verbs
In Western epistemology, there is a tradition originating with PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
of 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 PinkerSteven PinkerSteven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
discusses the usage of the phrase "having learned" as an example of a factive verb in George W. BushGeorge W. BushGeorge Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
's statement that "British Intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The factivity thesis, the proposition that relational predicates having to do with knowledge, such as knows, learn, remembers, and realized, presuppose the factual truth of their object, however, was subject to notable criticism by Allan Hazlett.
- Martha regrets drinking John's home brew. »Martha drank John's home brew.
- Frankenstein was aware that Dracula was there.»Dracula was there.
- John realized that he was in debt.»John was in debt.
- It was odd how proud he was.»He was proud.
Some further factive predicates: know; be sorry that; be proud that; be indifferent that; be glad that; be sad that.
Implicative verbs
- John managed to open the door.»John tried to open the door.
- John forgot to 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 to V; X avoided Ving»X was expected to, or usually did, or ought to V, etc.
Change of state verbs
- John stopped beating his wife.»John had been beating his wife.
- Joan began beating her husband.»Joan hadn't been beating her husband.
- Kissinger continued to rule the world.»»Kissinger had been ruling the world.
Some further change of state verbs: start; finish; carry on; cease; take (as in X took Y from Z » Y was at/in/with Z); leave; enter; come; go; arrive; etc.
Iteratives
- The flying saucer came again.»The flying saucer came before.
- You can't get gobstoppers anymore.»You once could get gobstoppers.
- Carter returned to power.»Carter held power before.
Further iteratives: another time; to come back; restore; repeat; for the nth time.
Temporal clauses
- Before Strawson was even born, Frege noticed presuppositions.»Strawson was born.
- While Chomsky was revolutionizing linguistics, the rest of social science was asleep.»Chomsky was revolutionizing linguistics.
- Since Churchill died, we've lacked a leader.»Churchill died.
Further temporal clause constructors: after; during; whenever; as (as in As John was getting up, he slipped).
Cleft sentences
- 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 then HE insulted HER.»For Marianne to call Adolph a male chauvinist would be to insult him.
- Carol is a better linguist than Barbara.»Barbara is a linguist.
Counterfactual conditionals
- If the notice had only said ‘mine-field’ in English as well as Welsh, we would never have lost poor Llewellyn.»The notice didn't say ‘mine-field’ in English.
Questions
- Is there a professor of Linguistics at MIT?»Either there is a professor of Linguistics at MIT or there isn't.
- Who is the professor of Linguistics at MIT?»Someone is the professor of Linguistics at MIT.
Accommodation of presuppositions
A presupposition of a sentence must normally be part of the common groundGrounding in communicationGrounding in communication is a concept that has been proposed by Herbert H. Clark and Susan E. Brennan and that refers to the "mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual assumptions" that is essential for communication between two people.- References :- See also :* Cognition* Communication*...
of the utterance context (the shared knowledge of the interlocutorInterlocutorInterlocutor may refer to:* Interlocutor , the master of ceremonies of a minstrel show* Interlocutor , someone who informally explains the views of a government and also can relay messages back to a government...
s) 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 blueOut of the blue (idiom)"Out of the blue" is an informal English idiom that describes an event that occurs unexpectedly, without any warning or preparation. from GoEnglish.com It is used as an adverb...
explain that my 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 called presupposition accommodation. We have just seen that presupposition triggers like my wife (definite descriptionDefinite descriptionA definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. The definite description is proper if X applies to a unique individual or object. For example: "the first person in space" and "the 42nd President of the United States of...
s) allow for such accommodation. In "Presupposition and Anaphora: Remarks on the Formulation of the Projection Problem", the philosopher Saul KripkeSaul KripkeSaul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...
noted that some presupposition triggers do not seem to permit such accommodation. An example of that is the presupposition trigger too. This word triggers the presupposition that, roughly, something parallel to what is stated has happened. For example, if pronounced with emphasis on John, 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 interlocutorInterlocutorInterlocutor may refer to:* Interlocutor , the master of ceremonies of a minstrel show* Interlocutor , someone who informally explains the views of a government and also can relay messages back to a government...
s 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 called anaphoricAnaphora (linguistics)In linguistics, anaphora is an instance of an expression referring to another. Usually, an anaphoric expression is represented by a pro-form or some other kind of deictic--for instance, a pronoun referring to its antecedent...
presupposition triggers.
Presupposition in Critical discourse analysis
Critical discourse analysisCritical discourse analysisCritical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways social and political domination are visible in text and talk....
(CDA) seeks to identify presuppositions of an ideological nature. CDA is critical, not only in the sense of being analytical, but also in the ideological sense.
Teun Adrianus van DijkTeun A. van DijkTeun Adrianus van Dijk , is a scholar in the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis ....
, "Critical Discourse Analysis", chapter 18 in Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003): pp. 352–371.
Van DijkTeun A. van DijkTeun Adrianus van Dijk , is a scholar in the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis ....
(2003) says CDA "primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality" operate in speech actSpeech actSpeech Act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. The contemporary use of the term goes back to John L. Austin's doctrine of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts...
s (including written text)—"text and talk". Van Dijk describes CDA as written from a particular point of view: "dissendent research" aimed to "expose" and "resist social inequality." One notable feature of ideological presuppositions researched in CDA is a concept termed synthetic personalisationSynthetic personalisationSynthetic personalisation is the process of addressing mass audiences as though they were individuals through inclusive language usage. It developed from critical discourse analysis , a branch of sociolinguistics concentrating upon how power is articulated.Norman Fairclough, credited with...
.
See also
- Fallacy of many questionsFallacy of many questionsA loaded question is a question which contains a controversial assumption such as a presumption of guilt.Such questions are used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda...
- Loaded question
- Exception that proves the ruleException that proves the rule"The exception [that] proves the rule" is a frequently confused English idiom. The original meaning of this idiom is that the presence of an exception applying to a specific case establishes that a general rule existed....
- AssumptionAssumptionIn logic an assumption is a proposition that is taken for granted, as if it were true based upon presupposition without preponderance of the facts...
/PresumptionPresumptionIn the law of evidence, a presumption of a particular fact can be made without the aid of proof in some situations. The types of presumption includes a rebuttable discretionary presumption, a rebuttable mandatory presumption, and an irrebuttable or conclusive presumption. The invocation of a...
(similar words)
Reference articles
- Beaver, David. 1997. Presupposition. In J. van Benthem and A. ter Meulen (eds.), The Handbook of Logic and Language, Elsevier, pp. 939–1008.
- Henk Zeevat. To appear. Accommodation. In Ramchand, G. and C. Reiss (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, Oxford University Press.
- Who is the professor of Linguistics at MIT?»Someone is the professor of Linguistics at MIT.
- Is there a professor of Linguistics at MIT?»Either there is a professor of Linguistics at MIT or there isn't.
- If the notice had only said ‘mine-field’ in English as well as Welsh, we would never have lost poor Llewellyn.»The notice didn't say ‘mine-field’ in English.
- Carol is a better linguist than Barbara.»Barbara is a linguist.
- Marianne called Adolph a male chauvinist, and then HE insulted HER.»For Marianne to call Adolph a male chauvinist would be to insult him.
- Pseudo-cleft construction: What John lost was his wallet.»John lost something.
- Cleft construction: It was Henry that kissed Rosie.»Someone kissed Rosie.
- Since Churchill died, we've lacked a leader.»Churchill died.
- While Chomsky was revolutionizing linguistics, the rest of social science was asleep.»Chomsky was revolutionizing linguistics.
- Before Strawson was even born, Frege noticed presuppositions.»Strawson was born.
- Carter returned to power.»Carter held power before.
- You can't get gobstoppers anymore.»You once could get gobstoppers.
- The flying saucer came again.»The flying saucer came before.
- Kissinger continued to rule the world.»»Kissinger had been ruling the world.
- Joan began beating her husband.»Joan hadn't been beating her husband.
- John stopped beating his wife.»John had been beating his wife.
- John forgot to lock the door.»John ought to have locked, or intended to lock, the door.
- John managed to open the door.»John tried to open the door.
- It was odd how proud he was.»He was proud.
- John realized that he was in debt.»John was in debt.
- Frankenstein was aware that Dracula was there.»Dracula was there.
- Martha regrets drinking John's home brew. »Martha drank John's home brew.