Lecture Five: Presupposition
1. Assumptions and Presuppositions
Whenever we talk, we take some things for granted. That is, we assume something to be the case, based on information we know from our previous experiences. Here is an example:
(1) 1997 is no excuse for corruption. Our advantage is the ICAC.
Upon hearing it, one cannot help being struck by the politically committed assumption behind the utterance. It is obvious that the speaker took it for granted that 1997 would be necessarily connected to corruption, i.e. it was assumed that there would naturally be corruption after June 1997. We can get this assumption of the speaker without knowing who the speaker is, because the assumption can be read off from certain linguistic features of the utterance [here the choice of a certain wording, which we will explain very soon. That means some presumed propositions, i.e. proposition whose value is presumed to be true or whose value is presumed to be already established, can be carried and implicitly conveyed by the entailment meaning of the utterance. We call such a meaning "presupposition".
2. Definitions
We can define presupposition as follows:
(2) The pragmatic definition of presupposition:
A presupposition is some proposition whose content the speaker takes for granted, i.e. assumes to be factual, prior to making an utterance and which is conveyed through (somewhat implicit) linguistic means (lexical or structural).
As some further clarifications, presuppostion is a proposition whose truth the speaker assumes to be mutually evident to the speaker and to the hearer and has ostensively made it clear to both sides in communication through encoded (even if somewhat implicit) linguistic means. From the point of view of the hearer, it is a proposition which he acquires through backward deduction upon hearing the related utterance and obtaining the explicature. In comparison, an explicature is a complete proposition explicitly stated and directly acquired by the hearer, after enrichment processes; an implicature is a proposition the hearer acquires through forward deduction upon hearing the related utterance and obtaining the explicature.
(2) is called a pragmatic definition, in contrast to a truth-conditional definition of presupposition, to be given presently.
If the utterance of a proposition P in sentence S or its negation presumes the truth of a different proposition Q, then Q is called the presupposition of P, symbolically represented as P >> Q. Thus we have (4):
(3) a. Mary's dog is cute. (=P)
b. Mary has a dog. (=Q)
c. P >> Q
[In fact, (3a) carries another presupposition, i.e. There exists a woman called Mary. We can see that an utterance can carry more than one presupposition.]
The hallmark of presupposition is that if the uttered sentence is negated, the presupposition remains intact:
(4) a. Mary’s dog isn’t cute. (=P, negation of (4a))
b. Mary has a dog. (=Q)
c. P >> Q
(5) a. 1997 is good excuse for corruption. (P, negation of (1))
b. There will be corruption in/after 1997. (Q)
c. P >> Q
Thus we reach the constancy of presupposition under negation, i.e. the presupposition of a statement will remain constant (i.e. still true) even when that statement is negated: (P >> Q) & (~P >> Q).
Now we give the truth-conditional definition of presupposition:
(6) The Truth-conditional Definition of presupposition:
A presupposition Q is a proposition which must be true if either the proposition P entailed by the sentence or its negation, i.e. ~P, will lead to the establishment of the truth of Q. Moreover, if Q turns out to be false, then neither P nor ~P will make any sense, i.e. they will be meaningless, or the utterance of P or ~P will be infelicitous or pragmatically unsound.
3. Types of presupposition
As we said before, presuppositions are identified by the hearer because of their linguistic features. That means we can single out these linguistic features as presupposition triggers, i.e. indicators of potential presuppositions related to sentences in isolation, which become actual presuppositions in utterances of sentences containing such linguistic devices. Presuppositions are divided into several types according to their propositional content, each containing certain triggers.
(i) existential presupposition: the assumption that the entity related to the mentioned expression exists.
Names normally presuppose existence, otherwise the utterance will be deemed inappropriate.
(7) Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays.
>> Shakespeare existed.
(8) ! Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays. However, it is not certain whether there did exist a man named Shakespeare.
Possessive construction also carries existential presupposition, as exemplified by (4).
(9) A. How is your brother ? [>> B has a brother]
B. But I do not have a brother!
A. Sorry, I made a mistake.
Existential presupposition is also carried by definite NP in English, at least in one type of use:
(10) I didn’t get the post. [>> There is a post.]
(11) !The present King of France is not bald. [>> France has a monarch now.]
(ii) factive presupposition: the assumption that the event following a certain class of verbs [factive verbs] is a fact.
(12) She didn’t realize he was ill. [>> He was ill.]
(13) We regret telling him the truth. [>> We told him the truth.]
(14) I wasn’t aware that she was married. [>> She was married.]
(15) It isn’t odd that he left early. [>> He left early.]
(16) I’m glad that it’s over. [>> It's over.]
(17) No one knows that John is gay. [>> John is gay.]
So is (1), in a more covert form, because it presupposes a future fact.
(iii) lexical presupposition: the use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that another (non-asserted but closely related) meaning is understood.
(18) He managed to loan a large sum of money from the bank. [>> He tried to do sth.]
Asserted meaning: succeed in doing sth.
(19) He stopped smoking. [>> He used to smoke]
Asserted meaning: put an end to smoking.
20) You are late again. [>> You were late before (It's not the first time that you were late).]
Asserted meaning: once more.
(21) He started to do exercise in the mornings. [>> He did not do exercises on a regular basis before.]
Asserted meaning: begin to exercise.
(22) I still do not understand. [>> I did not understand it before.]
Asserted meaning: a continuing situation with no change.
(iv) structural presupposition: certain sentence structures have been analyzed as conventionally and regularly presupposing that part of the structure is already assumed to be true.
(27) When did he leave? [>> He left.]
(28) Where did you buy the bike ? [>> You bought the bike.]
(29) How did you steal the money ? [>> You stole the money.]
(v) non-factive presupposition: the assumption that the event following a certain class of verbs did not take place
(31) I dreamed that I was rich. [>> I was not rich.]
(32) We imagined we were in Hawaii. [>> We were not in Hawaii.]
(33) He pretends to be ill. [>> He is not ill]
(vi) counterfactual presupposition: what is presupposed is not true and is the opposite of what is true, or contrary to facts (The opposite event takes place).
(35) If Cleopatra’s nose had been longer, the history of the world would have been different.
(36) If I were you, I wouldn’t act in such a showy way.
Different languages may exhibit different linguistic features related to presupposition. It is still controversial whether certain pragmatic information should better be analyzed as implicature instead of presuppositions. These two issues are specially relevant to the analysis of counterfactuals
7. Problems of Definition
When we proposed the semantic definition, we used notions of truth and proposition. When we proposed the pragmatic definition, we used the psychological notion of assumption and avoided using notions related to truth. The semantic definition has one limitation: it does not reveal the fact that presupposition is always related to the speaker’s information state of the mind. The pragmatic definition, on the other hand, can hardly cover all the uses of presupposition. Sometimes, there are uses of presupposition whose content the speaker does not take for granted. Let us look at the following example, taken from a textbook called Success with English:
(49) The other day, Martin went to see Gillian. As soon as he entered her house, he say packets of shampoo everywhere.
” What! Are you going to wash your horse?” asked Martin.
They both laughed at the idea.
Then Gillian told him what had happened,
” Listen. This is a competition. …”
Here, your horse >> “Gillian has a horse”. But it was obvious to both Martin and Gillian that Gillian did not have a horse. That is how the humorous effect was derived. The line of reasoning can be like this: Since Gillian bought a lot of shampoo, more than anyone can use, she must want to wash some large quantities of stuff, or something large. From the hearer’s point of view, as soon as he heard “your horse”, he knew the presupposed part. Then he has to reconcile this presupposition with the fact that Gillian does not have a horse, that the speaker knew this well enough, and infer the humorous effect created.
This is an example containing presupposition, but it is not covered by the pragmatic definition.
Here are some more discussions, taken from Stalnaker (1974):
Quotation A.
The principle criterion that has been used to identify presuppositions can be stated in the following way: Q is presupposed by an assertion that P just in case under normal conditions one can reasonably infer that a speaker believes that Q from either his assertion or his denial that P.
Quotation B.
A proposition P is a pragmatic presupposition of a speaker in a given context just in case the speaker assumes or believes that P, assumes or believes that his addressee assumes or believes that P, and assumes or believes that his addressee recognizes that he is making these assumptions, or has these beliefs.
Quotation C.
In normal, straightforward serious conversational contexts where the overriding purpose of the conversation is to exchange information, or conduct a rational argument, what is presupposed by the speaker, in the sense intended, is relatively unproblematic. The presuppositions coincide with the shared beliefs, or the presumed common knowledge. The difficulties in applying the notion come with contexts in which other interests besides communication are being served by the conversation. If one is talking for some other purpose than to exchange information, or if one must be polite, discreet, diplomatic, kind, or entertaining as well as informative, then one may have reason to act as if the common background were different than one in fact knows it to be. For example, when I talk to my barber, neither of us expects to learn anything; we are talking just to be civil, and to pass the time. If we haven’t much to say, we may act as if the background of common knowledge is smaller than it really is. “Cold today, isn’t it?” “Sure is, windy too.” “Well, spring will be here before long.” Although there is little actual communication going on here, it is clear that what is going on is to be understood in terms of genuine communication. We are pretending to communicate, and our pretense can be explained in terms of the same categories as a serious exchange of information.
In other cases, a speaker may act as if certain propositions are part of the common background when he knows that they are not. He may want to communicate a proposition indirectly, and do this by presupposing it in such a way that the auditor will be able to infer that it is presupposed. In such a case, a speaker tells his auditor something in part by pretending that his auditor already knows it. The pretense need not be an attempt at deception. It might be tacitly recognized by everyone concerned that this is what is going on, and recognized that everyone else recognizes it. In some cases, it is just that it would be indiscreet, or insulting, or tedious, or unnecessarily blunt, or rhetorically less effective to assert openly a proposition that one wants to communicate.
Where a conversation involves this kind of pretense, the speaker’s presuppositions, in the sense of the term I shall use, will not fit the definition sketched above (in Quotation B). That is why the definition is only an approximation. …
References
Grundy, Peter. (1995). Doing Pragmatics. London: Arnold. (recommended reading: basic)
Levinson, Stephen. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Stalnaker, Robert. (1974). Pragmatic Presuppositions (.zip file). In Milton K. and Peter K. Unger (eds.) Semantics and Philosophy. New York: New York University Press. Available in many anthologies. (recommended reading: advanced)
Yule, George. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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