Conversational Basis of Some Presuppositions
Danni Ma · Studies in literature and language · 2013
AbstractThrough thinking about the derivation of presuppositions, this paper intends to demonstrate the assumption that at least presuppositions have a conversational source. Moreover, it aims to provide a partial proposal for the conversational derivation and a multicomponent model of these presuppositions.Key words: Presupposition; Conversational basis; Common ground; Contextual; Defeasibility; Non- detachabilityINTRODUCTIONHow should we define presupposition? Linguists have proposed various definitions, and the debate about their relation to each other and their respective merits is far too extensive to summarize. Among them, two dominant kinds of explanation need to be mentioned here.Presuppositions as implicatures. According to this view, the presuppositions of a sentence are just another component of the total package of information that the sentence can be used to convey. Other components of this package include the content and the conversational implicatures. This view is proposed by Karttunen and Peters (1979) as well as Gazdar (1979). Only Karttunen & Peters use the term conventional implicatures; Gazdar calls them But what matters here is not terminology, but the concepts behind it. On this view, certain lexical items have, in addition to their truth conditional content, a special presuppositional content, which is carried through the compositional process to produce a propositional presupposition. This theory is generally refuted by pragmatists, for its validity is too specific to cover sentences like George has three children, and may have more for all I know. Although the Karttunen and Peter's model for treating presupposition has been rejected by many researchers, we still talk about the presuppositions of special words like know, too, even, and so on, as regard to their meaning.Presuppositions as admittance conditions. This view is best represented by Stalnaker's work (1973, 1974, 1979) and also in Karttunen (1974). It says that the propositions a sentence presupposes must be entailed by the ground of any context admitting that sentence. This notion of presupposition relies on a notion of common ground: the ground of a context of utterance is the combination of all those propositions that the interlocutors take for granted in that context (either because they are permanently shared beliefs in their community, or because they have been established in the course of the preceding conversation. Although mightier than the former, this theory is not authoritative enough to expel semantic aspects out of mention.Till now, there seems to be no such a theory that is adequate and integrate enough to cover the whole area. The real exit for us to approach this kind of simple but vague pragmatic phenomena remains in a fog.Presuppositions, however, might have a very different source, i.e., might be conversationally derived, that is, they might be inferences regulated by general conversational principles. Stalnaker (1974) suggests that at least presuppositions have a conversational source. He claims that:One of the primary advantages of the move from a semantic to a pragmatic account of presupposition as being the possibility of explaining some of the presupposition facts in terms of general assumptions about rational strategy in situations where people exchange information or conduct argument (1974, p.205).My primary goal is to motivate the claim that at least presuppositions have a conversational source, and to set out a partial proposal for the conversational derivation and multicomponent model of these presuppositions. Thinking about the derivation of presuppositions is worthwhile, because it gives us a different perspective on what presuppositions are, and perhaps could provide us a new perspective of solving the presupposition projection problem.1. EVIDENCE FOR THE CONVERSATIONAL BASIS OF SOME PRESUPPOSITIONSThe presuppositions having a conversational source possess two typical properties of conversational implicature? …