Presupposition

• Entailment
• Presupposition
• A comparison between entailment and
presupposition
• Applications: Entailment and
presupposition in real life
Entailment
Entailment

Three types of truth:

A.Priori and Posteriori

B.Necessary and Contingent
C.Synthetic and Analytic
Entailment

A.Priori and a Posteriori

An a priori truth refers to the speaker's knowledge regardless of the means of acquisition,
whereas an a posteriori truth requires empirical testing.

e.g.1 I went to Beijing in 2011. priori

e.g.2 There is only one female dormitory in UIBE. posteriori
Entailment

B.Necessary and Contingent

The mathematical statement one plus one equals two is a necessary truth because it goes
unchallenged in all circumstances.

A truth that can be contradicted is a contingent truth. For example, the extinction of leaf-scaled sea
snakes was a contingently true statement until this type of fish was rediscovered in 2002.
Entailment

C.Synthetic and Analytic

The analytically true sentence is judged from the meaning relations within the sentence, as in
sentence 1, whereas the synthetically true sentence is concluded in reference to the real world, as
shown in sentence 2.

e.g.1 My father is a male. analytic

e.g.2 My father is a professor. synthetic
Entailment

e.g.1 James went to school in Texas.

e.g.2 James went to school in America.

Entailment

Three types of entailment:

A. upward entailment and downward entailment

B. one-way entailment and mutual entailment
C. Background entailment and foreground entailment
Entailment

A. upward entailment and downward entailment

An upward entailment describes a sentential relation that is from the specific to the general, as in
e.g.1. In contrast, a downward entailment operates from the general to the specific, as in e.g.2.

e.g.1 a. Children are playing badminton. upward

b. Children are playing sports.
e.g.2 a. Thomas does not like watching TV shows. downward
b. Thomas does not like watching Saturday Night Live.
Entailment

B. one-way entailment and mutual entailment

Moreover, one may observe that sentence a entails sentence b but sentence b does not entail
sentence a. This type of entailment is termed as one-way entailment. A mutual entailment, on the
other hand, describes entailment that is valid in both directions,as in e.g.2.

e.g.1 a.I like eating cucumber. one-way

b. I like eating vegetable.
e.g.2 c. Bob is in front of Peter. mutual
d. Peter is behind Bob.
Entailment
C. Background entailment and foreground entailment

Most of the sentences include parts of speech such as the subject, the object, and the clause. Each one of these
elements gives rise to many background entailments, as in e.g.2 to e.g.1.
The background entailments of a sentence are considered not closely related to the current context; and when
the background entailment is considered adding new information and becoming the point of saying the
sentence, it becomes a foreground entailment.
e.g.1 Tony painted the wall.
e.g.2 a. Someone painted the wall.
b.Tony did something to the wall.
c. Tony painted something.
d.Something happened.
e.g.3 TONY painted the wall. (stress on Tony)
Presupposition
Presupposition

Six types of presupposition:

1.Existential Presupposition
2.Lexical Presupposition
3.Factive Presupposition
4.Non-factive Presupposition
5.Structural Presupposition
6.Counter-factual Presupposition
Presupposition

1.Existential Presupposition

The existential presupposition indicates that the speaker assumes the existence of the entities
named. It mainly has two patterns, possessive constructions and definite noun phrases.

e.g.1 John’wife was born in 1980.

e.g.2 The President of the United States went to visit France last week.
Presupposition

2.Lexical Presupposition

The lexical presupposition is the conventional interpretation of lexical items.

e.g.1 Jack managed to finish his homework.

e.g.2 Jack did not manage to finish his homework.
Presupposition

3.Factive Presupposition

A factive presupposition indicates the truth of the subsequent information in a sentence. In the
example,sentence1 presupposes sentence2. when a person realizes something, he usually discovers
a fact.

e.g.1 Jack realized that reading a foreign language book is difficult.

e.g.2 Reading a foreign language book is difficult.
Presupposition

4.Non-factive Presupposition

A non-factive presupposition is one that is assumed not to be true. The non-factive attitude verbs
block the presuppositions of the embedded clauses.

e.g.1 Jack dreamed of going to France.

e.g.2 Jack has not gone to France.
Presupposition

5.Structural Presupposition

The structural presupposition usually arises from a certain sentence. For example, the information
under the wh-form.

e.g.1 Why are you late?

Presupposition

6.Counter-factual Presupposition

Counter-factual Presupposition is the information in certain linguistic structures that

presupposing the absolute opposite of reality.
Compared with non-factive presupposition, the counter-factual presupposition hold a binary
relation with the truth while non-factive presupposition doesn’t.
Presupposition

Properties of presupposition

Constancy under negation: A presupposition can survive under negation.

Everyone knows that Jack has a girlfriend. (=p)

Everyone doesn’t know that Jack has a girlfriend. (=not p)
Jack has a girlfriend. (=q)
p ＞＞ q & not p ＞＞ q
Presupposition

Presupposition triggers

13 types of presupposition triggers

A comparison between
entailment and presupposition
Comparison
Applications: Entailment and
presupposition in real life
English writing

mutual entailment
a. He is a man who takes good care of the family.
b. These problems can be easily solved and tackled.
one-way entailment
c. My father is a man who takes good care of the family.
d. The government's budget is good and economical.
the failure of recognizing presupposition.
e. There are five students sitting in the classroom.
f. No one realizes the fact that Tom is married.
Interpersonal communication

Xiaohua: I happen to have two tickets for Romeo and Juliet. Would you like to go with me?

Xiaoli: Thank you for the invitation. But I have planned to go to another movie with my boyfriend.
THANK
YOU