presupposition (n.)

The philosophical uses of this term will be found in SEMANTIC discussion: a condition which must be satisfied if a particular state of affairs is to obtain, or (in relation to language) what a speaker assumes in saying a particular sentence, as opposed to what is actually asserted. It is also analyzed as a certain type of logical relationship between statements, contrasting with ENTAILMENT. Some linguists have come to use the term in a narrower sense, in a two-part analysis of sentences which contrasts the INFORMATION assumed (or presupposed) by the speaker, and that which is at the centre of the speaker’s communicative interest; in this sense, ‘presupposition’ is opposed to FOCUS. (The contrast between GIVEN and NEW information makes an analogous distinction.) For example, in one interpretation of this notion, the sentence Where’s the salt? is said to presuppose that the salt is not present to the speaker, that there is someone whom the speaker thinks might know where the salt is, and so on. This total study of the factors in the communicative context which affect the meaning of an utterance has attracted increasing interest from linguists in recent years, partly in SEMANTICS and partly under the heading of PRAGMATICS. Controversial aspects of analyzing language in these terms abound, in particular over the extent to which the notion of presupposition can or ought to be restricted to certain kinds of logical or behaviourally demonstrable factors.