PRESUPPOSITIONS

PRESUPPOSITIONS

1. It is something which a book on Semantics cannot afford to ignore it raises the problem of how to interprete the relation between Semantics and Pragmatics (meaning and use)

2. Three semantics relationships

   • Entailment
     • It is called also "Logical implication"
       • Relationship between two sentences where the truth of one sentence requiere the truth of the other
         • X entails Y
           • X: he married a blonde heiress Y: he married a blonde
   • Presupposition
     • It has been characterized between two sentences in which if one sentence is true the other one is assumed as true
       • X presuppose Y
         • X: The girl he married was an heiress Y: The married a girl
     • Logical prosupposition
       • It treats presupposition as a relation between presupposition in terms of their truth and falsehood
         • Negation Test
         • Conjuntion test
     • Pragmatic presupposition
       • It treats presupposition as a question of the status of a speech
         • A distinction is drawn between presupposition and assertion
         • There are three different levels to observe the differentiation
           • Definite / Indefinite Meaning
           • Topic / Comment
           • Focus / Presupposition
   • Implicature
     • It is associated with semantic conditions of well-formedness
       • Implicature is part of the meaning of utterance which although intended are not strictly part of "what is said" in the act of utterance nor do they follow logically from whatis said