PRESUPPOSITION

Presented By:
M Azam Shahid
Azhar Munir Bhatti
Shakeel John
Atif Saddique
Khalid Saleem
Presented To:
Dr Shehzad Farooqui
 Presupposition

Conclusion Introduction
with
Q&A

Types of
Antipresupposition Presupposition

Outline

Location &
Projection problems
Theories of
Presupposition
Speakers assume certain information is
already known by their listeners.
This is part of what is communicated but
not said.
Presuppositions and entailments
Two aspects of what is communicated
but not said
Presupposition: The information that a
speaker assumes to be already known.
(The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language, 1987)
Implicit meanings conveyed by the speaker through
the use of particular words.
Ex: "The Cold War has ended" presupposes that the
existence of the entities it refers to, in this case the
"Cold War".
Speakers, not sentences,
have presuppositions
Definition
A presupposition is a condition which must be
fulfilled in order for an expression to make sense
A presupposition is introduced by a lexical element
or construction called the presupposition trigger
Introduction
A presupposition:
Is a background belief, mutually assumed by the
speaker and the addressee for the utterance to be
considered appropriate in context
Survives when the utterance is negated, questioned
or embedded in an attitude context
Is triggered by a lexical item or a grammatical
construction in the utterance
 TYPES OF PRESUPPOSITION

Presuppositions are associated with the use of a

large number of words, phrases and structures.

These linguistic forms are considered as indicators

of potential presupposition, which can only become
actual presupposition in contexts with speakers.
 Existential Presupposition

Entities named by the speaker and assumed to be

present
- NP.
- Possessive constructions
Rahats car is new we can presuppose that
Rahat exists and that he has a car.

Some lexical triggers:

Definite NPs:
The student fell asleep.
The student didnt fall asleep
Atif is a bachelor (Atif is an unmarried male person)
 Factive Presupposition

Identified by the presence of some verbs such as "know,

"realize, be glad, be sorry, etc.
Some lexical triggers:
Factive verbs:
Lawrence realized Rana ate a sandwich.
Rana regretted eating a sandwich.
Rana liked eating a sandwich.
I was aware of the class cancellation on Saturday
They announced the winner of the contest.
She didnt realize that she was ill.
 Lexical Presupposition
In using one word, the speaker can act as if another
meaning will be understood. For instance:

Mary stopped running. (>>He used to run.)

You are late again. (>> You were late before.)
Are you still such a bad driver? (>> You were a bad
driver)

"stop, "again still are taken to presuppose another

(unstated) concept.
Some lexical triggers:
Change of state verbs:
Rana stopped eating a sandwich (at 2pm).
Rana started eating a sandwich (at 2pm).
Verbs of judgment:
 Structural Presupposition

It is the assumption associated with the use of certain

structures.
- wh-question constructions.

When did she travel to the USA? ( >> she travelled)

Where did you buy the book? (>> you bought the book)

The listener perceives that the information presented is

necessarily true, or intended as true by the speaker..
 Non-factive presupposition
it is an assumption referred to something that is not
true.
For example, verbs like "dream", "imagine" and
"pretend" are used with the presupposition that what
follows is not true.

I dreamed that I was rich. (>> I was not rich)

We imagined that we were in London. (>> We were

not in London)
 Counterfactual presupposition

It is the assumption that what is presupposed is not

only untrue, but is the opposite of what is true, or
contrary to facts.

- conditional structures,

If you were my daughter, I would not allow you to do

this. ( >> you are not my daughter)
If I were rich I would buy a Ferrari (>> Im not rich)
 Theories of Presupposition
Presupposition as a property of sentences
under this view, presupposition is part of linguistic meaning
therefore, it is a semantic phenomenon

Presupposition as speaker belief

under this view, a presupposition is something believed to be true
by the speaker, as part of a communicative act
therefore, its a pragmatic phenomenon
 The semantic view
Essentially, tries to account for presupposition as a
truth relation

p presupposes q if:
when p is true, so is q
when p is false, q is still true
when q is true, p could be either true or false

This allows us to view presupposition on a par with

other relations like entailment
 The semantic view
Accounts for the difference between entailment and
presupposition in a truth-conditional way

Presupposition:
If p is false, q is still true
My wife went to Karachi presupposes I have a wife
My wife didnt go to Karachi still presupposes I have a
wife
Entailment:
If p is false, then the entailment false
I saw Arif this morning I saw someone this morning
I didnt see Arif this morning -/-> I saw someone this
morning.
 Problem 1: presupposition failure
Under the semantic view, we would have to say that
presupposition failure results in falsity of a sentence:

The King of France is bald.

Presupposes that there is one and only one king of France
Fact: there is no King of France
Therefore: sentence is false

We could try to analyse presupposition differently:

e.g. If q is false, then p is not false, but dubious

But do we want to claim that existence and uniqueness are

part of the meaning of the definite description?
 Pragmatic solution to Problem 1
Under this approach, existence/uniqueness are not
part of the semantics of definite (cf our earlier
discussion of reference).

they are viewed as conventions on the use of such

expressions:
If a speaker uses a definite, this presupposes that
there is some unique entity that the listener can identify

If the convention is violated, this doesnt render the

sentence false, but infelicitous. Its not a lack of truth, but
a failure of the pragmatic conventions
 Problem 2: Presupposition triggers and
context

She cried before going out.

Presupposes: She went out

She died before going out.

Does not presuppose: She went out

If presupposition is so sensitive to context, can it

be part of the expression meaning?
The pragmatic reply
Presuppositions are defensible:

They are conventionally carried by certain

expressions

Speakers are conscious of the presuppositions

their utterances carry

But in some contexts, they are simply defeated

or cancelled
 Some more on the pragmatic theory

Influential exponents include Stalnaker (1974):

Suggested that when people communicate, they have a
common ground (CG)

This is a background set of assumptions that they both

make, and know to be true

Presupposition works against this common ground

Felicitous use of an utterance requires that its

presuppositions be commonly held by all interlocutors
 Dealing with new presuppositions
Its a fact about communication that not everything
we presuppose is known to our interlocutor
A: My dog died.
B: Didnt know you had one.

Ways out:
we can ask for clarification
sometimes, we dont because the presupposition is
quite clear and obvious
We just adopt it.
 Accommodation
Lewis (1979) suggested that interlocutors carry out
Accommodation:

If at time t something is said that presupposes p,

but p is not presupposed (not in common ground),
then, all other things being equal, p is introduced in
the common ground.
 Accommodation example

Speaker A (to B):

The guy who murdered my cat was really insane.
Theyve now put him in an asylum.

Suppose B didnt know my cat was murdered.

The definite description the guy who murdered my cat
presupposes that there is one person who was the
murderer of my cat
B can accommodate this, by assuming that its true and
is now part of common ground
Location
How to locate
Where, When & Why
Projection
Projection problems
 Presupposition triggers
Elements that introduce presuppositions are called

presupposition triggers
Factive verb
Shakeel regrets that she cooked the rice.

Phase change verbs

Azam stopped smoking.

It-cleft construction
It was Mohsin who chased the thief.

Pseudo-clefts
What Mphil group brought in the classroom was a bottle of Pepsi.
 Presupposition triggers
Iterative adverbs
Younas had fed up to do Mphil, again.
Additive particles
Naqvi had observed the phenomenon of language, too.
Definite descriptions
My dog had the flu.
Certain quantifiers
Dr Shehzad welcomed all the delegates from Oxford University.
 Presupposition Tests
Presuppositions are somehow independent of the

conventional meaning and entailments expressed by a

sentence
Can be distinguished from entailments via various

presupposition tests
All tests involve some modification of the original

sentence that changes the conventional meaning in

some respect what is left unaffected is a candidate for
a presupposition
 Presupposition Tests
Negation
Presuppositions are not affected by negation
Sentential negation affects the conventional meaning (truth) of a
sentence, but leaves presuppositions untouched
e.g.
Azam did not stop smoking.
It was not Atif who ate all chocolate cookies.
My dog does not have the flu.
 Presupposition Tests
Modals
Presuppositions are not affected by modals
Modals affect the modality of a sentence, i.e. its epistemic/
deontic /etc. status, but leave presupposition untouched
E.g.
Khan might regret that she cooked the rice.
Perhaps Dr. Shehzad welcomed all delegates from the Oxford
University
 Presupposition Tests
Questions
Presuppositions are not affected by question formation
Question formation affects the speech act (an assertion is
changed to a question), but leave presuppositions
untouched
e.g.
Does Shakeel regret that she cooked the rice?
Has Azam stopped smoking?
 Projection
Presupposition projection refers to the fact that larger
constituents containing presupposition triggers inherit
their presuppositions in certain way
Shakeel started to learn Italian.
Atif hopes that Shakeel started to learn Italian.
Azam hopes that Shakeel started to learn Italian and he
thinks of meeting him.
All inherit the presupposition triggered by started. But
Azam claims that Shakeel started to learn Italian.
If Shakeel did not learn Italian before, he started to learn
Italian.
Do not presuppose that Shakeel did not learn Italian
before (the moment of utterance).
 PROJECTION PROBLEM

In many cases presuppositions dont survive to

become the meaning of complex sentences.
Why?
They are destroyed by entailments
The entailments are more powerful of presuppositions
 PROJECTION PROBLEM

Examples:

The unicorn is waiting in the garden.

#Yet there are no unicorns.
Entailment problem
Pat knows that the unicorn is waiting in the
garden.
#Yet there are no unicorns.
Again entailment problem
 Antipresupposition
An antipresupposition, like a presupposition,
survives to negation.
An antipresupposition may be cancelled
An antipresupposition is triggered by a lexical
form, which is compared with a presuppositon
trigger.
A. A son of Shakeels is intelligent.
B. The son of Shakeels is intelligent.
Scale with presupposed contents: a < the
A is an antipresupposition trigger / the is a
presupposition trigger
 Antipresupposition
Some sentences impose the condition that the
interlocutors not take the truth of a certain proposition for
granted (Percus, 2006):

Either it will have to e taken for granted that the proposition in

question is false,

Or it will have to be an open issue whether the proposition is true

or not.
 Antipresupposition
In these cases, we might say that the sentence antipresupposes the
proposition in question.
Raheel thinks that Saba has a knowledge of cooking.
Antipresupposes via <think, know>:
Arif is repairing a chair in Azams living room.
Antipresupposes via <a, the>:
Azam has exactly one chair in his living room
Azhar assigned the same exercise to all of Adnans students.
Antipresupposes via <all, both>:
Adnan has exactly two students.