PRESUPPOSITION

Many of the issues that are central to the concept of presupposition were first raised by Frege
(1892) who argued that ‘if anything is asserted there is always an obvious presupposition that
the simple or compound proper names used have a reference’. If one asserts:
(1) Kepler died in misery
there is a presupposition that the name Kepler designates something. Moreover, he went on to
say that ‘Kepler designates something’ is not part of the meaning of ‘Kepler died in misery’;
if it was then ‘Kepler died in misery’ would have the logical form ‘Kepler died in misery &
Kepler designates something’ and thus the sentence ‘Kepler didn’t die in misery’ would be
equivalent to ‘Kepler didn’t die & the name Kepler has no reference’. That he felt would be
absurd. Therefore ‘Kepler designates something’ is the presupposition of both ‘Kepler died in
misery’ and its negative counterpart ‘Kepler didn’t die in misery’.
Frege sketches a theory of presupposition along the following lines:
(i) Referring phrases and temporal clauses carry presuppositions to the effect that
they do in fact refer.
(ii) A sentence and its negative counterpart share the same set of presuppositions.
(iii) In order for a sentence or assertion to be true or false its presupposition must be
true or satisfied.
In the early 50s Strawson distinguished between sentences and uses of sentences to make
statements that are true or false. According to Strawson, sentences are not true or false, only
statements are. Hence the statement:
(2) The King of France is wise
may have been true in say 1670 and false in 1770, but in 1970 the statement cannot be said to
be either true or false; the question of its truth or falsity does not even arise. Strawson
claimed that there is a special kind of relationship between
The King of France is wise
and
(3) There is a present King of France
namely that (3) is a precondition for (2) being judgeable as either true or false. He called this
relation presupposition and argued that it is a special species of inference, distinct from
logical implication or entailment, a species which derives from conventions about the use of
referring expressions. More formally, he held that a statement A presupposes a statement B
iff B is a precondition of the truth or falsity of A. Following Frege, Strawson argued that a
negative sentence, when uttered, will preserve its presuppositions.
The simplest view of semantic presupposition would be based on the following
definition:
A sentence A semantically presupposes another sentence B iff
(a) in all situations where A is true, B is true
(b) in all situations where A is false, B is true
Frege’s and Strawson’s claim that presuppositions are preserved in negative sentences
and statements provides us with an operational test for identifying presuppositions generally
referred to as constancy under negation. In order to identify the presupposition(s), we
simply take a sentence, negate it (i.e. negate the main verb or the topmost clause in a complex
sentence) and see what inferences survive, i.e. what inferences are shared by both the positive
and the negative sentence.
(4) John managed to stop in time
has the following inferences:

(5) John stopped in time

 (6) John tried to stop in time
From the negation of (4)
(7) John didn’t manage to stop in time

we cannot infer (5) since its main point is to deny (5). Thus on the basis of the negation test
and the assumption of its sufficiency (6) is the presupposition of both (4) and (7); (5) is the
entailment of (4). So negation alters a sentence’s entailments, but it leaves its presuppositions
untouched.

A semantic entailment is definable as follows:

A semantically entails B (A║—B) iff
a) every situation that makes A true, makes B true
b) every situation that makes A false, makes B false

TYPES OF PRESUPPOSITION

1. The existential presupposition is assumed to be present in possessive constructions and

more generally in any definite noun phrase. By using any of the following expressions the S
is assumed to be committed to the existence of the entities named:

your car >> you have a car

the King of Sweden >> the King of Sweden exists
the cat >> there is a cat
the girl next door >> there is a girl living next door

2. The presupposed information following a verb like know can be treated as a fact and is
referred to as factive presupposition. A number of other verbs such as realize, regret as well
as phrases involving be and aware, odd and glad have factive presuppositions:

She realized he was ill. >> He was ill.

We regret telling him. >> We told him.
I’m glad that it’s over. >> It’s over.

3. There are also other forms that may be treated as the source of lexical presuppositions. In
lexical presuppositions, the use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally
interpreted with the presupposition that another non-asserted meaning is understood. Each
time we say that someone managed to do something the asserted meaning is that ‘the person
succeeded in some way’. When we say that someone didn’t manage the asserted meaning is
that ‘the person didn’t succeed’. In both cases, however, there is a presupposition (non-
asserted) that ‘the person tried to do something’. So managed is conventionally interpreted as
asserting ‘succeeded’ and presupposing ‘tried’. Other examples of lexical items that trigger
lexical presuppositions include stop, start, again:

He stopped smoking. >> He used to smoke.

They started complaining. >> They weren’t complaining before.
You are late again. >> You were late before.
4. In addition to the presuppositions associated with the use of certain words and phrases, we
can also identify the class of structural presuppositions. In this case, certain sentence
structures have been analyzed as conventionally and regularly presupposing that part of the
structure is already assumed to be true. For example, a wh- interrogative construction is
conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that the information after the wh- form is
already known to be the case.

When did he leave? >> He left.

Where did you buy that book? >> You bought the book.
Who is the professor of linguistics at MIT? >> Someone is the professor of linguistics at
MIT.
Yes/no interrogatives and alternative interrogatives presuppose the disjunction of their
possible answers:
Is there a professor of linguistics at MIT? >> Either there is a professor of linguistics at MIT
or there isn’t.
Is Newcastle in England or is it in Australia? >>Newcastle is in England or Newcastle is in
Australia.

So far we have considered contexts in which presuppositions are assumed to be true.

There are, however, instances of non-factive presuppositions associated with a number of
verbs such as dream, imagine, pretend, etc. These verbs are used with the presupposition that
what follows is not true.

I dreamt that I was rich. >> I was not rich.

We imagined we were in Hawaii. >> We were not in Hawaii.
He pretends to be ill. >> He is not ill.

Second type if- clauses are associated with counter-factual presuppositions,

meaning that what is presupposed is not only not true, but is the opposite of what is true, i.e.
it is contrary to facts.

If you were my friend, you would have helped. >> You are not my friend.

So far we have dealt with semantic presuppositions. However, no semantic theory of

presupposition is likely to be viable. Any purely semantic approach to presupposition is
unsatisfactory since it cannot account for statements like the following

He died before he made a will

as opposed to

He suffered a series of illnesses before he made a will >> He made a will

He died before he made a will does not presuppose He made a will.

Clearly what we know about the world will not be consistent with assuming that later he
made a will. In this case the presupposition is an inference we draw as a result of bringing
together a linguistic form and an understanding of the world.

PRAGMATIC PRESUPPOSITION
Imagine someone says:
Tell Mary I’m at lunch

There wouldn’t be much point in saying this unless the S expected Mary to appear in the near
future and assumed that the H knew who Mary was and was willing to pass the message on.
Unless these conditions are met there is something wrong with Tell Mary I’m at lunch. We
can therefore assume that these conditions are presupposed.

Tell Mary I’m at lunch

>> Mary is likely to appear soon
H knows who she is
H will pass the message on

This sort of background assumption will be called pragmatic presupposition because it is

clearly related to the context of utterance. Tell Mary I’m at lunch also presupposes There is
such a person as Mary; this presupposition is not related to the context of utterance, it is
therefore conventional. Conventional or semantic presuppositions are triggered by lexical or
structural items. Pragmatic presuppositions are non-conventional in the sense that they are
not determined by a linguistic item alone, but by a combination of a linguistic item and what
we know about the world. Both conventional and pragmatic presuppositions share a common
feature, namely they both precede working out the implicature which in this case is that ‘the
person who left the message is anxious to avoid Mary’.