Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of

English speaking countries/ ULIS –

VNU

Lecture 3
• Entailment
- Background & Foreground Entailment
- One - way & Two - way Entailment
• Presupposition
- Types of Presupposition
- Projection problems
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Presuppositions vs.
in entailments
• A presupposition is something the speaker
assumes to be the case prior to making an
utterance
• An entailment is what logically follow from what is
asserted in the utterance
• Thus, speakers, not sentences, have
presuppositions and sentences, not speakers,
have entailments
• Entailments are not the concern of contemporary
pragmatics, as they are only related to sentences,
not speakers or listeners. 2

Pragmatics 1
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Presupposition
• A presupposition is the assumption the speaker
makes about what the hearer is likely to accept
without challenge.
• A presupposition is what a speaker or writer
assumes that the receiver of the message already
knows.

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i n Example
• By uttering’ When did you stop beating your
donkey’, the speaker presupposes one of
the following:
– You stopped beating your donkey
– You did beat your donkey
– You beat something
– You have a donkey

Pragmatics 2
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Presupposition
• Inferences that are very closely linked to
the words and grammatical structures
actually used in the utterance.
• Coming from our knowledge about the
way language users conventionally
interpret these words and structures.

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ntof Presupposition
Types
i
• Existential
• Factive
• Non-factive
• Lexical
• Structural
• Counter-factual

Pragmatics 3
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Potential Presupposition
• Assumptions made by speakers do not
have to be true.
- The earth is flat.

• Potential presuppositions – assumptions

expressed by the speaker but not verified
by the available data.

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1. Existential
i Presupposition
• Claims that certain entities do exist.

• Possessive construction is used to

express the existence of certain
entities .
- Henry’s canary can’t sing.

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Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Examples
- Possessive adjectives
his car, their house

- Definite Article
the Minister of Morality
the table
the Lord
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nt Presupposition
2. Factive
i
• Information treated as a fact that follows
such verbs as: know, realise, be aware of,
etc.
– Everybody knows that George Michael is a great
artist.
– They didn’t realise he was cheating.
– We regret telling Mary about the incident.

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Pragmatics 5
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

3. Non-factive presupposition
• Non-factive presuppositions are assumed not to
be true.

• Verbs used to express such presuppositions:

dream, imagine, pretends, etc.
- I pretend not to see him

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nt Presupposition
4. Lexical
i
• The use of a certain word is interpreted with the
presupposition that another meaning is
understood.

- managed = succeeded > tried

- didn’ manage = didn’t succeed > tried

• The use of a particular expression is taken to

presuppose another unstated concept

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Pragmatics 6
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

5. Structural presupposition
• Certain sentence structures presuppose
that part of the structure is assumed to be
true.
- How did you open the door?

This can be used by lawyers, detectives,

investigators, etc.

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i n Examples
• How fast was the car going when it ran the
red light?

• Why on earth did you tell him the truth?

• What was Ms Curious looking for in the

manager’s office?

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Pragmatics 7
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Counter-factual presupposition
• what is presupposed is not only not true,
but contrary to facts.

- If he were rich
( In fact , he is poor )

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Presupposition
i and definite NPs

• Look at the following pairs of utterances:

1. a. Mike might find the cheese cake in the
kitchen.
b. Mike might find a cheese cake in the
kitchen.
2. a. Is mike giving Ann that cheese cake?
b. Is Mike giving Ann a cheese cake?
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Pragmatics 8
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Presupposition and definite NPs

3. a. Did Mike hide Ann’s cheese cake?

b. Did Mike hide a cheese cake?

- Which one contains the presupposition that

at the time the utterance was made, ‘There
was a cheese cake’.
- What do these utterances have in common?

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i n Comments
• The ‘a’ utterance in each pair.
• What we notice is that in each of those utterances, the
noun ‘cheese cake’ is part of a definite NP. The words
‘the, this, that, these, those, Ann’s, my, your, ...’ trigger
this very basic kind of presupposition.
• This basic type of proposition is sometimes called
‘existential proposition’.
• Another e.g.: You’ll want DomeBeGone,my revolutionary
cure for baldness.
• Presuppositions:
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Pragmatics 9
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Presuppositions and Subordinate Clauses

• Look at the following utterances:
a. When did Mike smashed the television?
b. I was eating popcorn when Mike smashed the TV.
c. Why did Mike smash the TV?
d. I don’t understand why Mike smashed the TV.
e. I wonder how Mike smashed the TV.
- What do all these utterances presuppose?
Comments:
Wh-words : when, why, how, …can trigger propositions

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both when they are used to ask a question and when
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they introduced a subordinate clause.
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Presuppositions and Verbs
• Certaini
n
verbs and constructions also trigger
presupposition
- Steve regrets buying a dog.
- Mary pretends she’s a rock star.
- Ed should stop eating raw oyster.
• Other verbs that can trigger presupposition
know, realize, discover, find out, be aware that,
be strange that, pretend, imagine, dream, If I
were, stop, continue, keep, start, begin, etc.

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Pragmatics 10
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Entailment
• Entailment is a relationship that applies between two
sentences / propositions, where the truth of one implies
the truth of the other because of the meanings of the
words involved.
• In other words, a sentence expressing proposition X
entails a sentence expressing proposition Y if the truth of
Y follows necessarily from the truth of X.

• E.g: Mr. Smith has married Mary

Mary is now a married woman

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t Entailment
• In other i
n
words, if knowing that one sentence is
true gives us certain knowledge of the truth of the
second sentence, then the first sentence entails
the second.
– John ate the cake entails Someone ate something
– John killed Bill entails Bill died

• Entailment is concerned with the meaning of the

sentence itself (not utterance meaning). It does
not depend on the context in which the sentence is
used.
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Pragmatics 11
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Entailment
• Entailment also happens when one set of objects
is included in another. It may be seen as a kind of
hyponymic relation.
e.g. John caught a trout
John caught a fish
• Entailment can also involves the use of
determiners. This is simply the relation of inclusion
e.g. Every student is odd
Most students are odd
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Background Entailment
i n
e.g. Rover chased three squirrels
entails
• Something or someone chased three
squirrels.
• Rover did something to three squirrels.
• Rover chased three of something.
• Something happened.

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Pragmatics 12
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Foreground Entailment
• The foreground entailment is usually
indicated by stress .
- Rover chased THREE squirrels
The speaker indicates that the foreground
entailment, or his main assumption, is that
Rover chased A CERTAIN NUMBER of
squirrels.

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t e Entailment
One-way
inentailment: The first sentence
• One-way
entails the second but not the other way
round.
– John saw a bear entails John saw an animal
– The porridge is too cold entails the porridge is not too
hot.

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Pragmatics 13
Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS –
VNU

Two-way entailment
• The first sentence entails the second, and
the second sentence entails the first.
– John caught a trout entails John captured a trout
– John is behind Mary entails Mary is behind John

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Pragmatics 14