Understanding of presupposition in English (about 400 words)

The term “presupposition” was introduced in around 1850 by Peter Strawson – a

British philosopher. It contributes to production and comprehension of the speech and
becomes popular in late 1960’s. This essay will discuss several aspects of presupposition.
First of all, we can start with the introduction and definition of this element.
Presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be case prior to making an
utterance. In other words, this presupposition means background assumption or shared
knowledge of communication. For example, the sentence “Have you ever talked to Lin?”
has the presupposition that Lin exists. Therefore, speakers, not sentences, have
presupposition, and is treated as a relationship between two propositions, symbolized
as “>>”.
Next, I will show deliberate on features of presupposition. There are three main
characteristics. The first feature is remaining constant under negation, basically, it
means that the presupposition of a statement will remain constant even when that
statement is negated. For instance, both two sentence “John’s brother is a doctor.” and
“John’s brother is not a doctor.” mean that John has a brother. Moreover,
presupposition can be projected (or inherited) and cancelled (or denied).
Besides, presupposition is divided into 6 types. The first one is existential
presupposition. It is named by the speaker and not only assumed to be present in
possessive constructions, but more generally in any definite noun phrase. As an
example, in this sentence “Mike’s car is very old.”, the speaker can presuppose that
Mike exists and that his car is old. Next, the presupposed information following a verb
like “know”, “realize”, “be glad”, “be sorry”, and “odd” can be treated as a fact, and is
described as a factive presupposition. Opposite of the above type is non-factive
presupposition. It is an assumption referred to something that is not true. For example,
verbs like “dream”, “imagine” and “pretend” are used with the presupposition that
what follows is not true. The fourth type is lexical presupposition. In it, the use of one
form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition
that another (non-asserted) meaning is understood. The sentence will involve some
lexical items such as “stop”, “start”, “begin”, or “again” being presented with their
presuppositions. As an illustration, “Jane stopped smoking.” It is presupposed for Jane
used to smoke. In addition to presuppositions which are associated with the use of
certain words and phrases, there are also structural presuppositions, typically is wh-
question construction. “When did he leave?” is a good case in point (>> He left”). Last
but not least, there is a type named counterfactual presupposition. It means that what
is presupposed is not only true, but is opposite of what is true, or “contrary to facts”. A
conditional structure of the type shown in, generally called a counterfactual conditional,
presupposes that the information in the if-clause is not true at the time of utterance.
Take the sentence “If you were my son, I would allow to learn dance.” as an example,
it’s clearly that you are not my son.
In conclusion, presupposition is treated as known, counts as part of what is
communicated but not said. It has distinct characteristics and is divided into 6 main
categories with its identifiers.