Presuppositions

“Presupposition is restricted to certain pragmatic inferences or assumptions that seen at least to be built on
linguistic expression and which can be isolated using specific linguistic tests” Levinson (1983)

Linguistic expressions = Triggers

 Proper nouns (countries , names)

 Definite descriptions
 Epistemic factive verbs (know that, realize that…)
 Transitional or change of state verbs (continue to, discover that, stop, play on, arrive, begin, come…)
 Emotive factive verbs (regret that, to be surprised, amazed, sorry, proud, glad…)
 Implicative verbs (manage to, forget to, intended to, fail to, refuse to…)
 Expressions of repetition (return to, again, repeat, another time, restore, and come back…)
 Cleft constructions (it was X who did…)
 WH-questions
 WH-interrogative clauses
 Nominal relative clauses
 Adverbial clauses and expressions of temporal relations (since, while, when, as, after, before… )
 Nom-restrictive relative clauses
 Counter-factional conditions (conditional “if”)
 Lexical items (assassinate, persuade, accuse, reign…)

Ex: Marry has got married againPresupposition trigger = expression of repetition

Focusing on linguistic triggers, help us to infer knowledge
Linguistic tests:

 Questioning: Did Marry get married again?

 Negation: Marry did not get married again

The presupposition of Marry was married once s still there.

These two tests were meant to check if there is a presupposition in the sentence or not.

Types of presupposition:

Existential presupposition (through, possessive, proper nouns, definite articles…) means that “X” exists.
Ex: Mary’s dog is cute Existential presupposition (possessive)
Factive presupposition (a fact that happens in the real world) inference determined by certain expression.
Ex: John regrets cheating in the exam Factive presupposition (emotive factive verb) +the presupposition is
explicit
Lexical presupposition: (related to the lexical meaning of a particular word as stop, again, start…) the
presupposition is implicit.
Ex: They started complaining
Structural presupposition: (related to the use of particular grammatical structure such as wh-question in order to
assume that the information is already known)
Ex: when did he leave?  (he left) presupposition
Nom-factive presupposition: One that is assumed not to be true using verbs such as dream, imagine, pretend…)
Ex: I dreamed that I was rich
Non-factive (I was not rich)
(Something can happen)
Counter-factual presupposition: what is presupposed is not only true but is the opposite of what is true, like the
conditional almost impossible.
Ex: If you were my friend, you would have helped me (you are not my friend)
(Completely the opposite (it cannot happen = impossible)