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Tire Ki1tg of France,
Presupposition
Francesca Delogu
University ofTrento
1.Introduction
Since Frege (L 892), the notion of presupposition has been a central topic in philosophical-linguistic investigation. Presuppositional phenmnena in language have played an important role in the development of semantic and pragmatic theories of language and communication during the past decades. Currently. presuppositions are u·eated primarily in the frameworkofdynamic semantic theories, that is, theories in which the meaning of a sentence is defined in terms of context change. A number of theories following this tendency converge on the claim that presuppositionsare genuine examples ofthe semantic/pragmatic interface (van der Sandt 1992i Beaver & Zeevat 2004).
Despite the pervasive nature of presuppositions in language use, this phenomenon has turned out to be hard to explain in a straightforward way. Intuitively, presuppositions are propositions whose truth is taken for granted during a communicative interaction. But there has been no consensus about how presuppositions should be conceived, as semantic or pragmatic relations between sentences. between sentences and proposi· tions, or between speakers and propositions.
One of the broader assumptions in the literature is that presuppositions are nor· mally associated 'Nith or triggeredby particular lexical items and syntactic structures) known as pre uppositional triggers, or inducers. For example, definite descriptions. such as trigger an existential presupposition (the existence and the umqueness of a denotation) and factive verbs, such as regret and knOU$ presup pose the truth oftheir component clause. Other presuppositional triggers are factive
noun phrases (tire fact that X, tire ktrowledge tlrat X). cleft constructions (it was x
tlrat y·ed). counterfactual conditionals (presupposing the falsity of the antecedent), aspectual verbs {stop and cotrtitwe). iterative adverbs (too. again) and many more expressions.1 Linguistic form. therefore, plays a central role in the identification of the presuppositional status ofa proposition. \.Yhile the importance oflinguistic form for presuppositions is widely accepted in the literature, Robert Stalnaker has defined presuppositions without any reference to linguistic form. Stalnakers definition states
that presupposition is all that is assumed to be shared by participants in a cotwersa
tion (Stalnaker 1974, 1999, 2002).
1. Foran attempttoa li t oftriggers,sec Levinson 1983:Chapter 4 (Presuppositions).
196 Ftancesca Delogu
In this artide I present a broad overview of theoretical developments regarding the concept of presuppositions. I begin with the historical developments that led to the pragmatic theorists' proposals (e.g. Stalnaker). In this account I will focus on the notions ofpresupposition projection, informative presuppositions,contextand accom· modation. Finally, I will briefly outline some recent proposals from dynamic semantic theoriesoflanguage.
2.From semantic presuppositions to pragmatic presuppositions: Historical backgrounds
Following Frege's first observationofpresupposition in language, Strawson (1950) for· mulated the first clear characterization of presuppositional semantic effects: presup· positions are preconditions for assigning a truth value to a sentence. The well-known example discussed by Strawson {1950) is (1).
(1)Tile actual king of France is wise.
Is this sentence true or f"Cllse? Given that France is a Republic. the presupposition that there is a King of France is false. Given that the presupposition is false. the question concerning the truth or falsity ofan assertion of(1), according to Strawson, does not arise. In other words, the proposition presupposed must be true in order for thesen tence (or, better, the assertion) to have a truth value (Strawson t952). The notion of semanticpresupposition wasborn from thisobservation. Earlydefinitionsofsemantic presupposition employed the entailment relation. The entailment relation is defined such thata proposition A entails a proposition B ifand only ifin everyworld in which
A is true. B is also true. Semantic presuppositions are propositions entaHed both by a sentence and its negation. For example. both 71re King of Fmnce is bald and its nega· tion 111e Kiug of France is not baldentail theexistence ofa King ofFrance.2Atthe time. this semantic definition of presupposition demanded a revision ofclassical logic: it was evident that the bivalence principle had to be abandoned. Partial) trivalent and two-dimensional sernantics weredeveloped in which presuppositions wereconceived as constraintson the range ofworlds against which weare able to evaluate the truth or falsity ofasentence (see Beaver 1997 for a reviewofthese theories).
Despite the rich contribution rnade by these theories to the development of semantics, semantic presupposition theories eventually had to be partially aban· cloned. There were two fundamental properties of presupposition behaviour that
2. for the semantic definition ofpresupposition, survival under negation is a test for classif)'ing an mferencc as a presupposition.
Presupposation 197
semantic presupposition theories could not account for: 1) presuppositions are can· cellable, i.e.• they can be annulled bycertain contexts without this giving rise to con tradictions; and 2) contrary to Langendoen & Savin's (1971) cumulative hypoc!Jesis, presuppositions ofcompound sentencesdo not always correspond to the sum ofthe presuppositions oftheir parts.
Levinson (1983) pointed out thecancellability ofpresuppositions bysho\<\<ing that in certain beliefcontextspresuppositions can be annulled when beliefs contrary to the content ofthe presupposition exist. Forexample, in (2)
(2)At least John won't regret to have studre<i philosoph)'.
thepresuppositiontriggeredbythe factiveverbregret- that Johnhasstudiedphilosoph}' is cancelled ifthe participants in the conversation know John did not studyphilosoph)f.
Thesecondproblem,knownastileprojectioltproblemforpresuppositions, concems presupposition behaviour in compound sentences. Consider the following examples.. borrowed from Karttunen (1973):
(3)[fJack haschildrc:n, then nil o.fftck'r cluldren are bald.
(4) [fbaldness 1s hereditarr, then nil offnck's drildn:11 arcbald.
Both sentences contain the e -pressionall of Jack's cllildrelt. which trigger the pre supposition that Jack has children. In (3) the presupposition is not inherited by the whole sentence. because the information that Jack has children is conditional. From an utterance of (3), the listener cannot infer with certainty that Jack has children; i.e., the presupposition in some sense is blocked. In example (4), on the contrary, the proposition that Jack has children can be inferred with certainty because it does project from the consequent ofthe conditional. In other words, (4) presupposes that Jack has children.
This projection problem for presuppositio11s is not confined to conditional sen· tences. It also appears in conjunctions and disjunctions. \'\Then the first clause entails a presupposition rtriggered in thesecondclause, the wholesentencedoes notpresup· pose r. Presupposition theories have faced this problem from the time of Strawsons observation. One of the major challenges to theories of presupposition is to "deter· mine which factors are responsible for the beha\ior ofpresuppositions in compound sentences and to specify a recursive procedure to compute the presuppositions ofthe cornpound sentencesgiven the presuppositions ofits parts''(vanderSandt 1989: 289). Earl}' semantic approaches to pre.supposition failed to accomplish this because ofthe way semantic presupposition wasdefined. The entailment relation, in fact, is a mono· tonic. stable relation: if p semantically presupposes q. then p always presupposes q. Pre,c;upposition behaviour) in contrast, is flexible) non-monotonic, and influenced by linguistic and contextual factors such as beliefs and assumptions about the world and the other speakers.
198 France ca Delogu
Failure of the semantic account of presupposition behaviour in the early 1970s led to the treattnent of presuppositions as pragmatic phenornena. Presuppositions were related to speakers' subjectivity, beliefs and assumptions, and not to the truth· conditional content of the sentences uttered. Inspiration was drawn from Grice's theory of communication (Grice 1967). Grice's theory explains aspects of meaning that require the logico·semantic analysis of sentences in a pragmatic dimension as being connected with goals. interests and intentions of the speaker. It is well-known that Grice distinguished between what a speaker says the propositional content of a sentence and what he unplicates. vVhat a speaker implicates in a statement can be inferred, among other things, from assumptions that follow naturally from the coop· erative nature of conversational exchanges. Just as the truth valueof what is hnplicated during a conversation does not depend on the truth value of the sentences uttered, the truth value of presuppositions does not influence the truth value of the sentences in which they are triggered. The pragmatic notion of presupposition is rooted in this sharp separation between semantic and pragmatic content.
3.Pragmatic presuppositions
The pragmatic notion of presupposition developed by Stalnaker (1970, 1973, 1974) employed a Gricean-Jike strategy in order to avoid logico semantic complications that arose from presupposition falsity. In this pragmatic approach, presuppositions are "something like the background beliefs of the speaker propositions whose truth he takes for granted, or seems to take for granted in making his statement"' (Stalnaker 1974: 472).
Every conversation. according to Stalnaker (1974), takes place against a back· ground of belief.s and assumptions shared, or preswned to be shared. by the par· ticipants in the conversation. The existence of these background assumptions the commonground makes communication possible and effective. The common ground influences and isinfluenced by whata speaker asserts during a conversation. Speakers will avoid asserting propositions that are already part of the common ground, since this would result in redundant, non-informativestatements. Similarly, they will avoid asserting propositions incompatible with the common ground, since this would result in selfdefeating statements. Further, once a proposition is made, and accepted by the audience, it becomes part of the common ground. Stalnakers claim is that in theideal communicative dimension one in which the main purpose is to exchange infor· mation speakers presuppositions coincide with beliefs belonging to the con1mon ground. According to Stalnakers definition, a speaker pragmaticall)' presupposes a proposition P "in a given context just in case the speaker assumes or believes that P, assumes or believes that his addressee assumes or believes that P, and assumes or
