HU Berlin

Department of English and American Studies

WiSe 2023/24
Prof. Dr. Mingya Liu

Pragmatics
Session 8: Presupposition 31
This session
• the projection problem for presuppositions
• (relatedly) a bit of dynamic semantics
Dynamic semantics has its roots in work by the philosopher Robert Stalnaker and the
linguist Irene Heim.

1 The projection problem

As a reminder, presuppositions usually project in so-called embedded environments,

including if-clauses and negation. All of the following sentences presuppose that it was
raining before. The trigger for this presupposition is the verb (to) stop.

(1) a. It stopped raining. unembedded

b. It didn’t stop raining. under negation
c. If it stopped raining, we can go out now. in an if-clause
>> it was raining before

However, the following sentences do not presuppose that it was raining before, in spite
of containing stop:

(2) a. It started raining and then it stopped raining.

b. If it was raining, then it stopped raining by noon.
c. Either it stopped raining or it never was raining in the first place.
do not presuppose (>/>) that it was raining before

The sentence in (2-a) certainly entails that it was raining before, but it does not presuppose
it, i.e. doesn’t ‘take it for granted’.

This intuition is confirmed by the so-called hey, wait a minute test used by von Fintel
2004, henceforth HWAM-test. This test is another diagnostic to identify presuppositions:
it ‘targets’ content that is presupposed, as opposed to content that is asserted.

(3) Marie’s aunt is visiting today.

a. Hey wait a minute, I didn’t know Marie has an aunt.
b. #Hey wait a minute, I didn’t know Marie’s aunt is visiting today.
Pearson 2010

The HWAM-test is felicitous only if there is a presupposition failure. If there is no

presupposition failure, the test is itself infelicitous.
1
This handout is created based on the teaching materials shared by Dr. Alexander Wimmer. All
possible errors are mine.

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Exercise. Apply the HWAM-test to show that the presupposition of stop projects in
(1), but not in (2).

The presupposition does not project in (2). Is it even triggered then?

Another example discussed by Portner 2004; John Smith needs to be thought of as

one of the Smith brothers:

(4) If all the Smith brothers have children, then John Smith’s children will probably
inherit the family fortune.
>/>

What’s the trigger in (4)?

By contrast, the presupposition of stop does project in the following cases:

(5) a. It stopped raining and then it started raining.

b. If John came to the party, then it stopped raining by noon.
c. Either it stopped raining or Mary had an umbrella.
>> it was raining before

In (5), stop occurs in the same structural position as in (2), but its presupposition only
projects in (5).

Another example we are given to consider:

(6) If it stopped raining before noon, John had lunch in the garden.
>> it was raining before

What distinguishes from the presupposing vs. non-presupposing cases? It seems

fair to say that in the ‘non-projecting’ cases in (2), the presupposition in question is
already satisfied sentence-internally, so it doesn’t project. As a result, none of the
sentences in (2) is infelicitous (‘odd’) if uttered ‘out of the blue’, that is without the
relevant presupposition having been contextually provided.

Based on the non-presupposing cases in (2), the following generalization has been
proposed:2
{ }
p and q
(7) presuppose what p presupposes and what q presupposes – unless
if p,q
what q presupposes is already entailed by p

2
The or-cases are left aside.

2
Here is a slightly more concise representation following Geurts 2017; pp′ stands for ‘p
presupposes p′ ’, qq′ for ‘q presupposes q′ ’. (8-a) captures the presupposing cases,
(8-b) the non-presupposing ones.
{ }
pp′ and q
(8) a. each presuppose p′ .
if pp′ ,q
{ }
p and qq′
b. each presuppose q′
if p,qq′
– unless q′ is already entailed by p.

Portner 2004: an approach called dynamic semantics can explain these generalizations.
Dynamic semantics essentially makes semantics more pragmatic. It’s all about context.
Crucially, contexts can be created sentence-internally. So in a conditional if p, q, for
example, the if-clause creates a so-called local context against which the main clause
q is evaluated.

The ‘dynamic’ approach to the projection problem

First, let us reconsider the conjunction-case p and q, with q presupposing q′

• p is asserted, then q is asserted

• what is asserted (typically) becomes presupposed

• so by the time q is asserted, p has become presupposed

• if p entails q′ , then by the time q is asserted, q′ has become presupposed;

so q’s presupposition is ‘locally satisfied’ by p in that case, and does not project
beyond the sentence p and q

• if p does not entail q′ , then q’s presupposition is not locally satisfied by p, and
does project

Something similar is assumed for if p,q, again with q presupposing q′

• in conditional statements if p,q, q is never considered alone, but always under

the assumption that p is also the case

• in a way, p is asserted ‘hypothetically’ by the if-clause, and then q is asserted

against this hypothetical background in which p is true

• so by the time q is (hypothetically) asserted, p has become (hypothetically) presupposed

• if p entails q′ , by the time q is (hypothetically) asserted, q′ has become (hypothetically)

presupposed

• in this sense, q’s presupposition is again locally satisfied by p

This is quite informal. The conjunction case ‘p and q’ has been formalized like this:

(9) c + (p and q) = (c + p) + q

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‘c’ stands for ‘context’: very roughly, everything that the interlocutors are jointly presupposing.
(This is made more precise below.) The ‘+’-sign says that we are adding a new proposition
to c. As a result, that proposition is presupposed, and a new context has been created.
If we have a sentence p and q, p and q aren’t added all at once, but step by step. p
is added first. This leads to a new context c′ , one in which is just like the old context
c except that p is now presupposed, which it wasn’t before. q is asserted in c′ , not in
c. If c′ satisfies a presupposition of q, then this presupposition is locally satisfied by c′ ,
hence need not be satisfied by c in order for the utterance of p and q to be felicitous in c.

To be more precise, c is the so-called context set (Stalnaker): a set of worlds in

which all of a given context’s presuppositions are true. This is a set of worlds, not just
a single world, because no matter how much is presupposed, there will always be room
for infinitely many possibilities. If p, p′ and p′′ are presupposed, all three of them are
true throughout c. But there will always be some q that is not presupposed, and that
means there is room for q to be either true or false. This in turn means there has to be
at least one c-world in which q is true, but also at least one in which q is false.

2 Some more dynamic semantics

Basic assumptions:

• an infinity of possible worlds (≈situations)

• propositions as sets of possible worlds
• to be more precise: a proposition p is the set of all possible worlds in which it is true,
it can thus be seen as a property of worlds

(10) a. the common ground:

(i) all assumptions shared by addressee and speaker: presuppositions;
a set of propositions, each corresponding to one presupposition
(ii) {p: p is an assumption shared by both interlocutors}

b. the context set:

(i) the set of worlds in which all of the propositions in the common
ground are true
(ii) {w: each proposition p from the cg is true in w}

The context set (a set of worlds) is to be understood as the intersection of all propositions
p that are common ground. That’s because each proposition in the common ground is
itself a set of worlds.

Exemplification. Let the common ground look as in (11). So this is everything that
speaker and hearer agree on in our hypothetical scenario. (This is an idealization. In
real life, speaker and hearer tacitly agree on many more things.)

it’s raining  

(11) common ground = Maria fed a turtle yesterday = p0
 
Shelby is a cute dog = p1

4
 
p0 p1

The blue area is the context set c: those worlds in which all three propositions from
our hypothetical common ground are true.

Sentences that express a proposition p have the potential to extend the common
ground (keyword from work by Irene Heim: context change potential). To assert p
is a ‘proposal’ to add p to the common ground. If the proposal is accepted, p is added
to the common ground, so the common ground gets ‘updated’, so to speak (keyword
context update).

The more the common ground grows, the more the context set c shrinks
• every new update with some proposition p deletes those worlds from c in which p
is false: p is now common ground, and every proposition from the common ground
must be true in all worlds in c
• before p was added to the common ground (or before the context was updated with
p), c was open regarding p, which means that it contained worlds in which p was
true, but also worlds in which p was false
• so if we add p to the common ground, we get a new context set c′ which is a subset
of the old context set c because c still contained worlds that made p false, but c′ does
not: c′ ⊂ c
• c′ is (again) the intersection of those worlds that c shares with (the set of worlds
denoted by) p. This can be expressed as follows:
(12) c+p=c∩p

It may be tempting to think of the ‘+’-sign as an ‘additive’ operation, which makes

something ‘grow bigger’. But we just said that to update c with p causes c to shrink,
i.e. grow smaller. The ‘additive’ intuition is completely correct in that p does get added
to the common ground, so the common ground does in fact grow when p is added to
it. But the corresponding context set keeps shrinking with every new proposition p that
we add to the common ground, because this amounts to deleting the not-p-worlds from
the context set

Presuppositions in the dynamic model

Every proposition that is in the common ground counts as presupposed. So if a sentence
S asserts a proposition p, but presupposes another proposition p′ , this p′ must already
be part of the common ground, and this in turn means that it must be true in every

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world of the context set.3 Otherwise, the asserted proposition p cannot be added to
the common ground. Put differently, the membership of p′ in the common ground is a
necessary condition for the context to be updated with p.

This nicely explains our potential confusion when being confronted with a sentence
whose presupposition is new to us, and whose utterance hence catches us by surprise
(expressed in the HWAM-test above): we cannot (easily) ‘accept’ the asserted proposition
p as true (agree to add p to the common ground) because we are so confused by what
is taken for granted.

In reality, we often do accept a presupposition p′ that is new to us as part of the common

ground. That is, with the utterance of the sentence presupposing p′ , we may silently
adjust the common ground and the corresponding context set. This phenomenon is
known as presupposition accommodation. Stalnaker 1974 calls presuppositions
that are new to us informative. Accommodation is easier in some cases than in others.

Reconsidering our hypothetical common ground in (11), how easy is it going to be to

update it with the following sentences, and why?

(13) a. Hannibal is a cute dog as well.

b. Yesterday, the sun was shining.
c. Maria is still considering taking a trip to Disneyland.
d. The cat is asleep.

A note on (13-b): strictly speaking, our common ground doesn’t satisfy what the definite
NP the sun is presupposing, namely the existence of a unique sun. But see the
side remark above (11): of course it is intuitively clear that this is presupposed in
nearly every context of utterance around the world, as it is universally shared world
knowledge (see Portner 2004: 185). An alternative way of thinking of (11) would be to
say that it contains much more than the three propositions that we see, namely all those
propositions that are shared knowledge, be it around the world or just in a given culture.

References

von Fintel, Kai (2004). “Would you believe it? The king of France is back! Presuppositions
and truth-value intuitions”. inDescriptions and beyond: byeditorMarga Reimer &
Anne Bezuidenhout. Oxford University Press, pages 315–341. URL: http://mit.
edu/fintel/fintel-2004-kof.pdf.
Geurts, Bart (2017). “Presupposition and givenness”. inThe Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics.
Pearson, Hazel (2010). “A modification of the“Hey, Wait a Minute”test”. inSnippets:
22. URL: https://www.ledonline.it/snippets/allegati/snippets22002.pdf.
Portner, Paul (2004). What is meaning? Fundamentals of formal semantics. Blackwell.
Stalnaker, Robert (1974). “Pragmatic presuppositions”. inContext and content: [1999],
pages 47–62.

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Put differently, the context set must entail p′ , and hence be a subset of p′ : c ⊆ p′ .