ENTAILMENT vs PRESUPPOSITION

two independent kinds of relations

Entailment is a semantic relation that has to do with knowing whether a sentence is true or false in
relation to another because of our knowledge of the language where the lexical relations between
words hold.The relation of entailment can be seen as a result of the linguist structure of a particular
language. The source of entailment can be lexical or syntactic. It applies to sentences.
Entailment is not an inference in the normal sense: we don’t have to reason to get from
(i) I saw my father today to (ii) I saw someone today, we just know it instantaneously because of
our knowledge of the English language.
Presupposition is a semantic/pragmatic relation (it lies at the borderline of the division between the
two disciplines) in which our knowledge of the truth or falsity of a statement derives at least partly
from our empirical knowledge of the world. It applies to utterances

Truco
Differentiating entailment from presupposition can be done by negating both types of relations.
Negating an entailment destroys the relation whereas negating a presupposition does not affect it.
Presupposition remains constant under Negation (denial) and Questioning.

If we negate an entailing sentence, then the entailment fails; but negating a presupposing sentence
allows the presupposition to survive.
Compare the entailment in a) (i) I saw my father today (ii) I saw someone today
and the presupposition in: b) (i) The major of Liverpool is in town today (ii) There is a major of
Liverpool
If we negate a (i) in I didn’t see my father today it no longer entails I saw someone today., because I
can still have seen somebody. As a result, the entailment between the two sentences disappear.
However, if we negate b(i) as in The major of Liverpool isn’t in town today, the presupposition still
holds because there might be a major of Liverpool even if he’s not in town.

Examples:
Entailment a) The terrorist was killed. b) The terrorist died.
The source of entailment is clearly lexical. As the meaning components of kill include some of the
meaning components of die, we can say that sentence a) implies sentence b).

Presupposition a. The king of France is bald. b. There´s a king in France