Chierchia G., McConnell-Ginet S.

Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to

Semantics. MIT Press, 1990.

Presuppositions and Contexts

What is presupposition? In our earlier informal discussion of presupposition we

said that (an utterance of) a sentence S presupposes a proposition p if (the utterance
of) S implies p and further implies that p is somehow already part of the background
against which S is considered, that considering S at all involves taking p for granted. For
example, (30a) presupposes (30b); (30a) implies that (30b) is taken for granted.

(30a). Joan has stopped drinking wine for breakfast.

(30b). Joan used to drink wine for breakfast.

We are now able to make more precise this intuitive notion of presupposition.
The rough idea is that the presuppositions of a sentence S constrain or limit the class of
contexts C relative to which S can be felicitously uttered. Presuppositions of S must be
satisfied by a context c in order for S to be assertible, for an utterance of S to be
felicitous.

In the present section we want mainly to do two things: characterize

presuppositions more sharply with respect to other forms of implications and identify the
sort of facts a theory of presuppositions should account for. For our present purposes
the main empirical characteristics of presuppositions can be taken to be the following
two: being backgrounded and being taken for granted. Let us consider them in turn.

In our previous discussion we took a sentence S to presuppose p just in case p

was implied by S in the following family of sentences. Thus, for example, for sentence
(30a) the relevant S family is given in (32); each of these sentences does seem to imply
(30b).

(32) a. Joan has stopped drinking wine for breakfast.

b. It is not the case that Joan has stopped drinking wine for breakfast.
c. Joan hasn't stopped drinking wine for breakfast.
d. Is it the case that Joan has stopped drinking wine for breakfast?
 e. Has Joan stopped drinking wine for breakfast?
f. If Joan has stopped drinking wine for breakfast, she has probably begun
to drink more at lunch.

What the S family test essentially tests for is backgroundedness of implications: it

marks out implications that are attached to S not only when it is asserted but also when
it is denied, questioned, or offered as a hypothetical assumption.

In contrast, nonbackgrounded implications of a sentence vanish unless the

sentence is asserted and thus do not pass the S family test. For example, note the
implication from (33a) to (33b) and that from (34a) to (34b).

(33) a. Lee kissed Jenny.

b. Lee touched Jenny.

(34) a. Mary has a child.

b. Mary has exactly one child.

The (b) implication is an entailment in (33) and a conversational implicature in

(34). In each case the implication vanishes in members of the S family other than the
affirmative or if the assertion of S is directly challenged by "I don't think so" or met with
other reservations. The implied (b) propositions are neither backgrounded nor taken for
granted by utterances of the implying (a) sentences.

Backgroundedness does not suffice, however, to identify presuppositions. Some

implications seem to pass the tests for being backgroundedthey survive as implications
throughout the S familybut are not presupposed. A case in point is that of non-restrictive
relative clauses (sometimes called appositive or parenthetical relative clauses).
Consider, for example, (35a) and its implication family (35b-d). Each of (35a-d) implies
(35e), the content of the relative clause. Yet (35e) is not presupposed.

(35) a. Jill, who lost something on the flight from Ithaca to New York, likes
to travel by train.
b. Jill, who lost something on the flight from Ithaca to New York, doesn't
like to travel by train.
 c. Does Jill, who lost something on the flight from Ithaca to New York, like
to travel by train?
d. If Jill, who lost something on the flight from Ithaca to New York, likes to
travel by train, she probably flies infrequently.
e. Jill lost something on the flight from Ithaca to New York.

The proposition that Jill lost something on the flight from Ithaca to New York,
expressed in (35e), is a backgrounded component of what is being asserted, not of
what is being presupposed. In other words, in the sentences in (35) we articulate our
assertions in two major parts: a main assertion in the foreground and a secondary one
in the background. To see this more vividly, compare (35a) with (36), where the same
proposition is presupposed.

(36) What Jill lost on the flight from Ithaca to New York was her new flute.

What sort of discourse might be required for uttering (35a) rather than (36)?
Suppose someone starts a conversation with (37).

(37) Let me tell you about Jill Jensen, a woman I met while flying from
Ithaca to New York last week.

Clearly such a beginning does not suppose any already existing information
about Jill and, more specifically, does not establish that Jill lost something on the flight
from Ithaca to New York. In such a context (35a), which contains the information that Jill
lost something in a nonrestrictive relative clause, seems a perfectly fine thing to say
next, whereas (36), a pseudo-cleft that presupposes that information, is quite bizarre. If
(37) were followed by (38), which explicitly states that Jill lost something, then the
pseudocleft (36) could easily come next.

(38) She lost something on the trip.

The difference seems to be that uttering (36) is infelicitous when the

backgrounded proposition is not already established, whereas no such constraints are
placed on uttering (35a). What emerges from this discussion is the following. The
hallmark of a presupposition is that it is taken for granted in the sense that its assumed
truth is a precondition for felicitous utterance of the sentence and places a kind of
constraint on discourse contexts that admit the sentence for interpretation. The S family
provides a good way to test the presuppositional status of implications because a
proposition cannot be presented as already assumed and simultaneously be presented
as denied or hypothesized or queried. Failing the S family test is excellent evidence that
an implied proposition is not presupposed but asserted. The S family test does not
definitively identify presuppositions, because background status of an implied
proposition is compatible with its being presented as not already assumed. If there is no
suggestion of infelicity in using S in a discourse where p is clearly not taken to be part of
the common ground, then S does not presuppose p even if p is backgrounded by S (as
in the case of nonrestrictive relative clauses).

What a sentence conveys or implies can be classified not only in terms of its role
in discourse (as we just did) but also in terms of how that implication comes about or
how it is licensed. From the latter point of view we can distinguish between what
depends strictly on truth conditions (entailments) and what depends on the interaction of
truth conditions with something else.

The latter kind of implications are Gricean implicatures. As the reader will recall,
Grice distinguished between conventional and conversational implicatures.
Conventional implicatures have to do with aspects of meaning that do not seem to be
strictly truth-conditional in nature. Consider, for example, the sentences in (39).

(39) a. Jim went to the store and bought nothing.

b. Jim went to the store but bought nothing.

It would appear that (39a) and (39b) are true in exactly the same situations.
However, (39b) suggests something that (39a) does not. It suggests that the speaker
perceives a contrast between going to the store and buying nothing. Intuitively, this
suggested contrast is conventionally conveyed by but.

Furthermore, the contrastive nature of but appears to be backgrounded in

general. For example, the sentence "If Jim went to the store but bought nothing, we
are in trouble" seems to require for its felicitous utterance the same type of contrast as
"Jim went to the store but bought nothing." Furthermore, the suggested contrast
seems to be taken for granted. These considerations suggest that the conventional
implicature associated with but is a presupposition. In fact, all Grice's examples of
conventional implicatures seem to be presupposed, as Karttunen and Peters (1979)
pointed out. Conversational implicatures, on the other hand, depend on conversational
dynamics. Thus, for example, implicatures such as the one in (34), repeated here, seem
to follow naturally from the Gricean maxim of quantity.

(34) a. Mary has a child.

b. Mary has exactly one child.

A hearer will tend to infer (34b) upon bearing (34a) on the assumption that the
speaker is being cooperative in conveying all the relevant information she has. As
discussed above, (34b) is not presupposed. Some conversational implicatures,
however, are presupposed. In other words, some presuppositions appear to be
triggered by principles that guide conversational exchanges. This has been argued, for
example, in connection with the presuppositions associated with factive verbs, like
discover. 7 Thus, the S family tests and intuitive judgments of being taken for granted
show that (40a) presupposes (40b). However, the contrast between (40c) and (40d)
suggests that the presupposition is due not so much to an intrinsic property of discover
(beyond its contribution to truth conditions) but to principles of conversation.

(40) a. Jim discovered that Bill is in New York.

b. Bill is in New York.
c. If Jim discovers that Bill is in New York, there will be trouble.
d. If I discover that Bill is in New York, there will be trouble.

The point is that (40c) can be taken to implicate or presuppose (40b), but (40d)
cannot. If the implication to (40b) arises from the conventional meaning of discover in
the case of (40c), it is hard to see why that implication should be absent in the case of
(40d). On the other hand, if we assume that the implication to (40b) is conversationally
triggered, an account for this could go roughly as follows. Discover is a factive, which is
to say that if x discovers p, p must be the case.

A speaker who has reason to doubt that Bill is in New York typically has no
reason to conjecture what would happen if someone discovered it. Hence, asserting
(40c) will lead the hearer to infer (40b), on the assumption that the speaker is being
cooperative. But by the same token, if the speaker knew Bill's whereabouts, she would
have discovered whether Bill is in New York or not and hence would have no reason to
utter (40d), which implies that it is an open question whether she will discover that Bill is
in New York. So again on the assumption that the speaker is being cooperative, (40d)
does not license inferring (40b). And indeed, the implicature from (40c) to (40b) is
defeasible. Suppose that the conversationalists know that Jim is investigating Bill's
whereabouts but do not know what the outcome is. In such a context it would be
perfectly appropriate to utter (40c) and speculate on the results of a particular outcome
of Jim's inquiry, yet there would be no implication that (40b) is true.

We will return to this sort of example below. To summarize, we have classified

what a sentence conveys along two dimensions. The first is the role in discourse of its
different components, the basis of the distinction between what is presupposed and
what is asserted. The second is how the different components of what is conveyed are
licensed. On this dimension, we have distinguished entailments (licensed by truth
conditions alone) from implicatures (licensed by the interplay of truth conditions with
additional conventions or conversational principles). This leads us to the following
classification:

(41) a. A entails B (if A is true, B is true).

b. A presupposes B (B is backgrounded and taken for granted by A).
c. A conventionally or conversationally implicates B (B follows from the
interaction of the truth conditions of A together with either linguistic conventions
on the proper use of A or general principles of conversational exchange).

This, in turn, gives us the following possibilities. 3.1.1 Entailment versus

presupposition A sentence can entail another sentence without presupposing it.
Sentence (33), repeated here, provides us with an illustration.

(33) a. Lee kissed Jenny.

b. Lee touched Jenny.

The implication of (33b) does not survive in the S family contexts and hence is
neither backgrounded nor taken for granted by (33a). A sentence can both entail and
presuppose another sentence, as the former notion is based on how an implication is
licensed, while the latter is based on its discourse status. Thus (42a) both entails and
presupposes (42b).

(42) a. Joan realizes that syntax deals with sentence structure.

b. Syntax deals with sentence structure.

If (42a) is true, then (42b) is true; at the same time (42b) is backgrounded and
taken for granted by (42a) (note the survival of the implication in S family contexts). On
the definition of entailment that we have so far, a sentence can presuppose another
sentence without entailing it. For example, sentence (43a) presupposes but does not
entail (43b).

(43) a. If Bill discovers that syntax is easy, he will be delighted.

b. Syntax is easy. Sentence (43a) seems generally to need (43b) for felicity.

Hence (43a) presupposes (43b). But in special circumstances this presupposition

can be canceled (for instance, if the context makes it clear that the speaker doesn't
know whether syntax is easy; see the discussion of (40)). So on the definition of
entailment we have so far, (43a) does not entail (43b), for there are circumstances
where (43a) is true but (43b) needn't be. In sections 3.2 and 4 we will develop and
modify this position.

Our strategy involves viewing the presuppositions of a sentence as entailed

contextually whenever the sentence is assertible. We could then revise the notion of
entailment in such a way that a sentence does indeed entail its presuppositions in this
special sense.
 Chierchia G., McConnell-Ginet S. Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to
Semantics. MIT Press, 1990.

How Words Are Semantically Related. Lexical decomposition.

An appealing idea that has been explored by many rather different approaches to
word meaning is that word meanings and the concepts that words labelare are
constructed from semantic components that recur in the meanings of different words.
The first step in this approach is the observation that words are semantically related to
one another in systematic ways. For example, the semantic properties of the words
parent, mother, father, spouse, wife, husband, female, and male license the entailment
from the (a) sentences to the (b) and (c) sentences in (1) through to (4).

(1) Hilary is a mother.

b. Hilary is a parent.
c. Hilary is female.

(2) a. Lee is a father.

b. Lee is a parent.
c. Lee is male.

(3) a. Hilary is a wife.

b. Hilary is married.
c. Hilary is female.

(4) a. Lee is a husband.

b. Lee is married.
c. Lee is male.

Mother and wife differ from father and husband by licensing application of female
rather than male. Wife and husband differ from mother and father in sharing the
inference to a sentence with married rather than one with parent. Mother labels a
concept that involves femaleness and parenthood; father involves maleness and
parenthood. The concept designated by wife involves femaleness and being married;
husband involves maleness and being married.
 Considerations of this sort have led to the idea that words are not unanalyzed
atoms but can be decomposed into a set of recurrent conceptual features or traits.

Decomposition has often had a further aim: to identify a stock of universal

semantic components from which all languages draw in constructing the concepts their
lexicons label. It certainly seems plausible that aiti (Finnish for mother) and isa (Finnish
for father) differ in the same dimension as their English equivalents. The concept of
femaleness, for example, is not peculiar to English.

A particularly interesting and original approach to the issue of lexical

decomposition is represented by Dowty (1979). Dowty addresses the issue of the
different aspectual classes within which predicates in natural languages seem to fall. An
observation that goes as far back as Aristotle is that VPs can be classified in at least
three classes: states, activities, and telic eventualities.

Examples of states are given in (6).

(6) a. John knows Latin.

b. John is on the roof.
c. John is drunk

States are like snapshots of the world at a given instant. They lack a natural
culmination or end point, and their subject is perceived not as an agent (as doing
something) but as an experiencer (as experiencing something).

Activities share with states the property of lacking a natural culmination. Yet they
are agentive in that they typically involve a subject doing something. They cannot in
general be viewed as instantaneous snapshots of the world. Examples are the
following:

(10) a. John is kicking.

b. John is pushing a cart.
 An interesting thing to note is that often the interaction of a predicate with certain
phrases may shift the original aspectual class of that predicate. For example, walk is
basically understood as lacking a natural end point. However, walk to school does
culminate (when one reaches school). So combining walk with the adverbial to school
bounds the activity of walking, gives it a culmination point, and thereby shifts its
aspectual class from that of activities to that of telic eventualities.

In this connection Dowty puts forth a very suggestive hypothesis. He introduces

three aspectual operators DO, BECOME, and CAUSE and suggests that verbs are
defined from basic stative predicates in terms of these operators.

Cruse A. Meaning in Language. An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. –

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. – 424 p.

Contextual variability of word meaning.

Once we try to grapple with the notion 'the meaning of a word', we come up
against a serious problem, namely, that the interpretation we give to a particular word
form can vary so greatly from context to context. The observable variations range from
very gross, with little or no perceptible connection between the readings, as in: They
moored the boat to the bank and He is the manager of a local bank, through clearly
different but intuitively related readings, as in My father's firm built this school (school
here refers to the building) and John's school won the Football Charity Shield last year
(in this case school refers to (a subset of) the human population of the school), to
relatively subtle variations, as in the case of path in He was coming down the path to
meet me even before I reached the garden gate and We followed a winding path
through the woods (a different mental image of a path is conjured up in the two cases),
or walk in Alice can walk already and she's only 11 months old and / usually walk to
work, where not only is the manner of walking different, but so also are the implicit
contrasts (in the first case, talking and standing up unaided, and in the second case,
driving or going by bus/train, etc.).

We shall begin by identifying two properties of variant readings of a word which

are relevant to the problem of individuating and counting them. Suppose we find a
perceptible difference in the readings of a word in two contexts. We can first of all ask
whether (or to what extent) there is a sharp semantic boundary between the two
readings (in our terms, how discrete are they?); a second question is whether they are
mutually exclusive (in our terms, are they antagonistic?). Both of these will be taken as
aspects of the distinctness of two readings.

Consider the following sentence: (1) Mary is wearing a light coat; so is

Jane.

Intuitively, light means two different things: "light in colour", or "light in weight".
Bearing in mind these two interpretations, there are four different situations with regard
to the properties of Mary's and Jane's coats:

(i) they are both lightweight,

(ii) they are both light coloured,
(iii) Mary's coat is lightweight and Jane's is light coloured,
(iv) Jane's coat is lightweight and Mary's is light coloured.

Notice, however, that sentence (1) is capable of designating only two of these
situations, namely, (i) and (ii). In other words, once one has decided on a reading for
light one must stick with it, at least through subsequent anaphoric back-references. This
is known as the identity constraint. Notice that the pressure for identity of reading is
much reduced (although perhaps not completely absent) if light is mentioned twice; (2)
is not anomalous:

(2) Mary is wearing a light coat; Jane is wearing a light coat, too, as a
matter of fact. However, whereas Mary's coat is light in colour but heavy, Jane's
is dark in colour, but lightweight.

The identity constraint observed in (1) should be contrasted with its

absence in (3):

(3) Mary has adopted a child; so has Jane.

The child must obviously be either a boy or a girl, but there are no constraints on
the possible readings: the child adopted by Jane does not have to be of the same sex
as Mary's, hence there is no support here for any suggestion that "boy" and "girl"
correspond to distinct readings of child.

The readings of an indisputably ambiguous word such as bank display another

property besides discreteness, which we shall regard as criterial for ambiguity. This is
antagonism. Consider a sentence which admits both readings, such as We finally
reached the bank. It is impossible to focus one's attention on both readings at once:
they compete with one another, and the best one can do is to switch rapidly from one to
the other. In any normal use of this sentence, the speaker will have one reading in mind,
and the hearer will be expected to recover that reading on the basis of contextual clues:
the choice cannot normally be left open. If the hearer finds it impossible to choose
between the readings, the utterance will be judged unsatisfactory, and further
clarification will be sought.

A sentence which calls for two discrete and antagonistic readings to be activated
at the same time will give rise to the phenomenon of zeugma, or punning, as in John
and his driving licence expired last Thursday (John calls for the "die" reading of expire,
while his driving licence calls for the "come to the end of a period of validity" reading);
another example of punning is When the Chair in the Philosophy Department became
vacant, the Appointments Committee sat on it for six months (this plays on multiple
meanings of both chair and sit on).

It may be presumed that antagonistic readings are ipso facto also discrete, and
therefore that antagonism represents the highest degree of distinctness.