Presupposition
Presupposition
A presupposition is background belief, relating to an utterance , that
- must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context
- generally will remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and
- can generally be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.
The utterance John regrets that he stopped doing linguistics before he left Cambridge has the following presuppositions:
- There is someone uniquely identifiable to speaker and addressee as John.
- John stopped doing linguistics before he left Cambridge.
- John was doing linguistics before he left Cambridge.
- John left Cambridge.
- John had been at Cambridge.
Page/s: 79–80
Source: Talmy 1985
Talmy, Leonard. 1985. "Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms." In Shopen 1985d
Page/s: 179–181, 204–205, 216–217
Source: Levinson 1983
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983.Pragmatics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University.
Page/s: 283
Source: Crystal 1980
Crystal, David. 1980.A first dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Page/s: 97–98
Source: Caton 1981
Caton, Charles E. 1981. "Stalnaker on pragmatic presupposition." In Cole, P. 1981 83–100.
Related terms
- RT⇆ Actual Presupposition
- RT⇆ Addressee
- RT⇆ Illocutionary Force
- RT⇆ Nondefective Illocutionary Act
- RT⇆ Open Presupposed Proposition
- RT⇆ Potential Presupposition
- RT⇆ Pragmatics
- RT⇆ Presupposition Denial
- RT⇆ Presupposition Suspension
- RT⇆ Presupposition Trigger
- RT⇆ Speaker
- RT⇆ Still Tense
- RT⇆ Utterance
- ExactMatch: https://glossary.sil.org/term/presupposition
