Introduction to Pragmatics
(Einführung in die Pragmatik – Einzelansicht)
Summer 2015
Tuesdays 2:30--4:00pm @ 2321.HS 3H
INSTRUCTOR
Todor Koev ([email protected])
Presupposition
 Presupposition is one of the basic types of inferences, along
with entailment and conversational implicature.
 Presuppositions describe facts that need to hold true / be
taken for granted / treated as uncontroversial in order for the
sentence to make sense.
 In “Implication relations”, we have argued that
presupposition has three main properties:
o Property #1: Presuppositions are lexically/grammatically
triggered.
o Property #2: Presuppositions are not defeasible.
o Property #3: Presuppositions are not blocked by operators
/ presuppositions project.
#1 Grammatically triggered
 Presuppositions are typically launched by certain lexical items or
syntactic constructions, called presupposition triggers.
 Examples of presupposition triggers:
o Definite descriptions (the man, my lazy poodle,…)
(1)
The present Queen of France lives in Paris.
 France has a Queen.
 Recall: We mark the relationship between the sentence and
its presupposition by : “p  q” means “p presupposes
q”.
#1 Grammatically triggered cont’d
o Factive predicates (regret, be happy that,…)
(2) I’m happy that the semester is over.
 The semester is over.
o Aspectual verbs (stop, start,…)
(3) I started training for the marathon.
 I didn’t train for the marathon before.
o Clefts (it was X who…)
(4) It was Tim who hacked the server.
 Someone hacked the server.
o Iterative adverbials, particles (too, again, also,…)
(5) I am hungry too.
 Someone else is hungry.
#2 Not defeasible
 Presuppositions are usually not defeasible: they cannot be denied
by the speaker in subsequent discourse.
 Defeasibility Test for presupposition:
o Assume that sentence p presupposes q.
o Try to say something like “p and/but/yet not-q”.
o If you get a sense of oddness, then the presupposition q is not
defeasible.
 Example: Try to deny the presupposition of (1) above.
(1')
# The present Queen of France lives in Paris but France
doesn’t have a Queen.
o That doesn’t work because the first part of the sentence
presupposes that France has a Queen while the second part
denies that.
#2 Not defeasible cont’d
 More examples of non-defeasible presuppositions:
(6) # John regrets selling pot on the street but he never did.
(7) # I stopped going to class but I never went to class.
(8) # It was David who cheated on the exam but no one cheated.
 Q: Describe the presupposition triggered by the first part of the
sentence in each case.
#3 Projection
 One of the hallmarks of presupposed inferences is that they are not
blocked when the sentence is embedded under various operators
(such as negation, modals, if-operators, or questions).
 We say that presuppositions project.
 To diagnose projection, we use the Family of Sentences Test:
o You suspect that sentence p presupposes q.
o Say the following sentences:
 not-p
(negate the sentence)
 might-p / possibly-p (modalize the sentence)
 if p, then p'
(conditionalize the sentence)
 p?
(turn the sentence into a question)
o If those sentences still imply q, then q projects!
#3 Projection cont’d
 Example:
o Both (9) and its “family” in (10) imply (11). (Operators are
marked in bold.)
o So, (9) presupposes (11)!
(9)
The present Queen of France lives in Paris.
(10) a. The present Queen of France doesn’t live in Paris.
b. The present Queen of France might live in Paris.
c. If the present Queen of France lives in Paris, then we
can visit her there.
d. Does the present Queen of France live in Paris?
(11) France has a Queen.
 Q: Which of the three presupposition properties (grammatically
triggered, not defeasible, projection) are shared with entailments?
The three properties
 What is the relationship between the three properties of
presupposition?
o Property #1 (“grammatically triggered”) is likely a matter of
lexical semantics. Let us put it aside.
o Property #2 (“not defeasible”) follows from Property #3
(“projection”): Presupposed inferences cannot be denied
because they are part of the sentence meaning.
 How can we explain presupposition projection?
o Today: A classical three-valued account that captures the basic
pattern of projection.
o Next time: A dynamic/discourse story that captures a richer
pattern of projection.
Three-valued logic
 Classical logic employs two truth values: sentences are either true
or false.
 Classical logic has problems explaining presupposition:
o False presuppositions often render the entire sentence not false
but infelicitous:
(12) # The first man to walk on Mars is bald.
 Humans have been on Mars.
(Weird)
(False)
o True presuppositions are compatible with true/false sentences.
(13) The current German Chancellor is a woman/man. (True/False)
 Germany has a Chancellor.
(True)
 Three-valued logics have three truth values: 1 (true), 0 (false), and
# (“undefined”/“meaningless”/ “nonsense”).
The basic idea
 Introduce a three-valued logic that incorporates classical
logic.
 If truth values assigned to subformulas are classical (1 or 0),
then the entire formula receives a classical truth value.
 If, however, one or more parts of a formula are undefined (#),
then the entire formula is undefined.
 That is, undefinedness “projects” from smaller parts to the
entire formula.
 Spoiler alert: We want to connect this formal notion of
“projection” with the intuitive property of presupposition
projection.
Classical (two-valued) logic
A A
1 0
0 1
A B 1 0
1
1 0
0
0 0
A B 1 0
1
1 1
0
1 0
A B 1 0
1
1 0
0
1 1
 In formulas with two parts, the leftmost/top column lists the
possible truth values of the first/second part.
 The truth values of complex formulas are determined by the
truth values of the immediate parts.
 Formulas are either true or false.
Three-valued logic
A A
1 0
0 1
# #
AB 1
1
1
0
0
#
#
0
0
0
#
#
#
#
#
AB 1
1
1
0
1
#
#
0
0
1
#
#
#
#
#
A B 1
1
1
0
1
#
#
0
1
0
#
#
#
#
#
 The true-false part of the logic is classical (cf. previous slide).
 Formulas are undefined as soon as one of its parts is undefined.
Defining presupposition
 Presupposition can now be defined as deciding on whether a
sentence has a classical truth value.
 Definition (Presupposition):
A sentence p presupposes q (i.e., p  q ) if and only if
 p   # whenever q   1.
 In words: p presupposes q if and only if p becomes
undefined whenever q is false (or undefined).
 p  if q   1
 An equivalent definition:  pq   
if q   0 or q   #
#
Back to infelicity
 The definition of presupposition can explain why a sentence
feels odd/infelicitous when its presupposition is false.
(14) # The first man to walk on Mars is bald.
 Humans have been on Mars.
(=p)
(=q)
 Since p  q and q   1, according to the definition of
presupposition,  p   # .
 This explains why the sentence in (14) sounds infelicitous.
Back to projection
 The projection property says that the presuppositions of a
sentence are not cancelled if the sentence is negated,
modalized, conditionalized, or questioned.
 For example:
(15) The mayor of Düsseldorf likes falafel.
 Düsseldorf has a mayor.
(16) The mayor of Düsseldorf doesn’t like falafel.
 Düsseldorf has a mayor.
 This is predicted by our three-valued logic + the definition of
presupposition.
Presupposition criterion
 Recall the definition for negation:
p p
1 0
0 1
#
#
 It follows that  p   # if and only if p   # .
 This property and the definition for presupposition imply the
following criterion (or property) for presupposition:
p  q if and only if p  q
 In words: A sentence retains its presuppositions even when
the sentence is negated.
Presupposition criterion cont’d
 This is why:
pq
iff  p   # whenever q   1
iff p   # whenever q   1
iff p  q
So p  q iff p  q . Yay!
(Presupp. Def.)
(Negation)
(Presupp. Def.)
 A sentence presupposes something iff its negation
presupposes the same thing as well!
 In other words: Negation does not cancel presuppositions.
 Can apply a similar strategy for presupposition projection
under other operators.
Projection & cancelability
 Our three-valued logic is cumulative, i.e. it “collects” all the
presuppositions in the sentence.
 That means that the presuppositions of a composite sentence
are the sum of the presuppositions of its parts.
 It follows that presuppositions cannot be cancelled or filtered
out: if a single presupposition is false, then the entire sentence
is infelicitous.
 Next time we will see that sometimes presuppositions do get
cancelled!
 The projection problem: How the presuppositions of the
composite sentence depend on the presuppositions of its
parts?
Wrap-up
 Pragmatic phenomena like presupposition often require a departure
from classical logic/semantics.
 Today we fiddled with one aspect of classical logic: its binary trueor-false nature.
 Although thinking of sentences as either true or false is very
intuitive, we saw that introducing a third truth value can have its
empirical advantages.
 Three-valued logic was able to explain two basic properties of
presupposition: its ability to upset the classical true-or-false nature
of sentence meaning and its projection behavior.
 Next time we will pay attention to the more discourse-like or
“pragmatic” aspects of presupposition.
For next time
 Please read: “Presupposition projection” (uploaded on
Lehrmaterialien)