Presupposition 9783110876291, 9789027931528

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JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE N I C O L A I VAN W I J K D E D I C A T A edenda curat C.H. V A N S C H O O N E V E L D Indiana University

Series Minor, 203

PRESUPPOSITION

by

DAVID E. COOPER University of London

1974

MOUTON THE H A G U E • P A R I S

© Copyright 1974 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co., N.V. Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-91043

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 The Introduction of Presuppositions

7

2 The Extension of Presuppositions

16

3 The Truth Condition Account

32

4 The Pragmatic Account

45

5 The Conceptual Account

58

6 Speech Acts and Presuppositions: (1) The Basis of a Theory

74

7 Speech Acts and Presuppositions : (2) The Extension of a Theory

92

8 Speech Acts and Presuppositions: (3) Objections Considered 107 9 Conclusion — Presupposition in Semantics and Syntax . .

117

References

126

Index

129

1 THE INTRODUCTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

A brief glance at recent work in linguistics will reveal the central role given to the notion of presupposition. Of all the semantic notions stressed by the proponents of Generative Semantics (or Semantic Syntax), it is, perhaps, the most highly worked. The rich employment of the notion is, however, matched by a peculiar paucity in direct discussions of it. In a comprehensive 29 page bibliography at the end of a recent linguistics anthology,1 not a single book or article is cited whose prime purpose is to investigate presupposition. This is an unhappy situation, for it cannot be held, plausibly, that this is an intuitively crystal-clear notion. The concern of linguists with presupposition is more recent than that of logicians and philosophers, in whose writings we do find more direct discussion of the notion. But, in the first place, a good deal of the discussion is in relation to certain specialized problems, whose connection with the wider aspects of language is not entirely clear. And, second, I think it is fair to say that no adequate account of presupposition has been given by logicians or philosophers, even for their own purposes. "Presupposition", the Kiparskys say, is one term in a "very basic and consequential distinction". 2 Presuppositions, others have claimed, are essential in providing semantic representations or 1

New Horizons in Linguistics, edited by J. Lyons (Penguin, 1970). P. and C. Kiparsky, "Fact", in Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology, edited by D. Steinberg and L. Jakobovits (Cambridge University, 1971), 349. 2

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THE INTRODUCTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

lexical information. 3 And presupposition, it is suggested, can be employed to illuminate a host of problems in logic and philosophy. If all of this is so, it is high time to take a close look at this versatile notion. In this chapter I want to see how presupposition has been introduced into linguistic and logical theory. I shall later argue, though, that we need not, and should not, regard these original reasons behind its introduction as the best reasons, or as reasons which constrain an adequate account of the notion. In the next chapter I shall sketch how the notion has been extended, in an apparently natural manner, to cover a wider range of cases than at first. In chapters 3 to 5 I shall examine various attempts to analyse the notion; attempts which, I hope to show, are unsuccessful. In the remaining chapters I shall develop what seems to me to be an adequate analysis. Presupposition, I have said, has a place in the linguist's, the logician's, and the philosopher's spheres of interest. But I do not want to suggest there are sharp boundaries separating these spheres. On the contrary, it may be, merely, that the logician and philosopher are concerned with certain rather special cases of presupposition which are relevant to solving their particular problems. The linguist will be interested in these, and other cases as well, as instances of a far-reaching phenomenon of language. I shall begin, at any rate, by sketching how the notion of presupposition has come to be introduced into the artificially distinguished spheres of logic and linguistics. First, though, a few points about terminology. I shall, for the moment, speak of sentences being true or false, and of sentences as being the items which presuppose and are presupposed. This will 3

G. Lakoff writes "... we define the semantic representation SR of a sentence as SR = (Pi, PR, Top, F,...), where PR is a conjunction of presuppositions...", in his "On Generative Semantics", in Semantics, edited by Steinberg and Jakobovits, p. 234. And C. Fillmore claims that information about presuppositions is one of the nine types of information which "a lexicon viewed as part of the apparatus of a generative grammar must make accessible to its users, for each lexical item", "Types of Lexical Information", in Semantics, edited by Steinberg and Jakobovits, 370.

THE INTRODUCTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

9

need to be amended later on (see chapter 6). I shall use the term 'presupposition' to refer not only to sentences which are presupposed by others, but also to the relation which holds between a presupposing and presupposed pair of sentences. I shall, for example, speak of "cases of presupposition", meaning cases where one sentence presupposes another. I will employ the term 'entailment' in a sense familiar to logicians: a sentence S entails a sentence S' if and only if (a) if S is true then S' must be true, and (b) if S' is false then S must be false. Sometimes I shall also speak of a sentence's "being an entailment", meaning a sentence which is entailed by another. By 'assertion' I shall, for the moment, mean either (a) the act of asserting, or (b) a sentence which a speaker asserts, or (c) some part of a sentence which a speaker asserts (e.g. one conjunct in a conjunction), or (d) some sentence other than the one asserted which is equivalent in some sense to the one asserted. (For example, if a speaker says 'Yes' in reply to the question "Is S true?", then although he has not uttered S he has asserted it since, in this context, asserting by saying 'Yes' is equivalent to asserting by uttering S.) Considerable amendment will be required in this terminology later.

LOGIC

According to Russell a sentence is either true, false, or meaningless.4 Consider then the sentence (1) The king of France is bald as uttered in 1972. It is not meaningless, and it is certainly not true. So, for Russell, it must be false. And Russell indeed analyses (1) in such a way that its falsity is apparent — into the form: There is one and only one king of France, and he is bald. Since the claim that there is a king of France is false, the whole sentence is therefore false. 4

"On Denoting", Mind 14 (1905).

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THE INTRODUCTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

Yet Russell's analysis seems mistaken. For he is making (1') There is a king of France an assertion of (1). But one feels that a speaker who asserts (1) is asserting merely that the king is bald, not in addition that there is a king of France. Moreover, it seems odd to regard (1) as false; for this suggests that (1") The king of France is not bald would be true; which, in turn, suggests that (1"') The king of France has hair would be true — which, of course, they are not. If this is so then not merely is (1') not asserted in (1), it is not entailed by it either. For if (1) entailed (1') then the falsity of (1') would render (1) false, which it appears not to be. These objections to Russell are sometimes summarized by saying: (1) presupposes (1'). Russell's original trichotomy — true, false, or meaningless — ignores the role of presuppositions. A meaningful sentence need be neither true nor false. It will only have a truth value if its presuppositions are true. By introducing the notion of presupposition, then, it seems we avoid the implausibility of regarding (1') as asserted in, or entailed by, (1), and that we reveal the fallacy in Russell's bogus trichotomy.5 Here is another instance which prompts the introduction of presupposition into logical theory. Most persons would regard the inference from (2) All of John's children are clever

5

For this way of objecting to Russell - though his terminology differs from mine - see P. F. Strawson, "On Referring", Mind 59 (1950).

THE INTRODUCTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

11

to (2') John has children as valid. Yet the most favoured representations of (2) and (2') in the class calculus are: "For any x, if x is a child of John, then x is clever", and "There is at least one x, such that x is a child of John" respectively. Since the first is hypothetical, the second clearly does not follow from it. The following seems a plausible way of reconciling the naturalness of the inference from (2) to (2') with the fact that the inference, as represented in the class calculus, is invalid: (2) does not entail (2'), as the class calculus makes clear, but it does presuppose it. Any speaker asserting (2) would be presupposing that (2') was true. That is why any hearer would naturally infer (2') from (2). So, in order to explain the naturalness of the inference, we do not have to revise the class calculus. (Note that it would not be plausible to say that (2) entails (2') for another reason. If it did, then the falsity of (2') would entail the falsity of (2). But where John has no children it would be peculiar to regard (2) as either true or false.)6

LINGUISTICS

A semanticist is concerned with the contribution which words make to the information content of sentences. Now it is clear that the same words may make very different contributions on different occasions. Consider, for example, how the words 'he', 'killed', 'his', and 'grandma', function in the following sentences. (3) Harry regretted that he killed his grandma (3') He killed his grandma In (3') it is asserted that he killed his grandma. But it would be odd 6

See P. F. Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory (Methuen, 1952).

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THE INTRODUCTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

to say that this is asserted in (3). This can be gauged from such facts as: (a) the negation of (3'), but not the negation of (3), would be taken as a denial that he killed his grandma; (b) the interrogative form of (3'), but not of (3), would be taken as questioning his killing of his grandma. So let us say that (3) does not assert, but presupposes, that he killed his grandma. Presuppositions, unlike assertions, remain constant under negation and questioning.7 It might be suggested that (3) entails (3') (assuming that 'he' in both sentences refers to Harry). But if this were so, then the falsity of (3') would entail the falsity of (3). To say that (3) is false would suggest that Harry did not regret killing his grandma, that he was callous about it. But none of this would be true if Harry never did kill her. In other words, it seems that (3) would be neither true nor false unless he killed his grandma — for otherwise there is nothing for him to regret or not to regret. For purposes, then, of detailing the different roles that the same words can play in different sentences, it would seem that the notion of presupposition is essential. Unless we make a distinction between assertion and presupposition, it is impossible to see why, for example, questions will be interpreted differently with respect to what it is they call in question. There is a second important way in which presupposition has come to interest linguists. One basic tenet of Generative Semantics is that economical explanation of syntactic phenomena is impossible unless semantic information is taken into account. Unless such information is taken into account, the syntactic explanations will be ad hoc. For example, McCawley has argued persuasively that unless the semantic notion of set is employed in representing underlying structures of sentences like John and Mary love their respective wives Those men love their respective wives 7

See P. and C. Kiparsky, "Fact", in Semantics, and D. T. Langendoen, "Presupposition and Assertion in the Semantic Analysis of Nouns and Verbs in English", in Semantics, edited by Steinberg and Jakobovits.

THE INTRODUCTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

13

then it will be impossible to devise a single rule to cover all 'respectively'-transformations.8 If, as had been earlier suggested, this transformation operates upon structures formed by conjoining jVP's, then ad hoc qualifications would have to be made for sentences like the second one above. Recently it has been argued, again persuasively, that the notion of presupposition, like that of set, is essential in economical syntactic explanation. Consider the following sentences: A. Harry regretted that he killed his grandma Harry grasped that he killed his grandma Harry realized that he killed his grandma B. Harry believed that he killed his grandma Harry claimed that he killed his grandma Harry thought that he killed his grandma The syntactic behaviour of the A-sentences is significantly different from that of the B-sentences. For example, the A-sentences alone permit a paraphrase employing the words 'the fact that'. So while Harry regretted the fact that he killed his grandma is grammatical, * Harry believed the fact that he killed his grandma is not. Again, only the A-sentences permit a paraphrase employing a gerund construction. Thus Harry grasped killing his grandma but not

8 "The Role of Semantics in a Grammar", in Universals in Linguistic Theory, edited by E. Bach and R. Harms (Holt, Rhinehart, & Winston, 1968).

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*Harry thought killing his grandma At first it may seem that these differences are due solely to the idiosyncracies of the different verbs in the higher clauses. But this would be to ignore a significant generalization that can be made, which would not make us place ad hoc restrictions on the behaviour of certain verbs. For it is clear, on a little reflection, that the complement occurs differently in the A-sentences from the B-sentences. The complement must be true for any of the A-sentences to be true; whereas the B-sentences could be true even if the complement is false. So let us say that the A-sentences presuppose that Harry killed his grandma. If, following the Kiparskys, we say that the higher verbs in the A-sentences are 'syntactically factive', and that higher verbs in sentences which presuppose the truth of their complements are 'semantically factive', we are in the position to make one of those generalizations which Generative Semanticists aim at: verbs are syntactically factive if and only if they are semantically factive.9 We shall see later that presuppositions can be employed to predict other syntactic phenomena, including features of stress (p. 24) and Neg-raising (pp. 122 ff.). The point, for the moment, is simply that presupposition is bound to interest linguists once the possibility of making significant syntactic generalizations on the basis of presuppositions is realized. It is then not surprising to find a linguist, such as Lakoff, insisting that presuppositions must be represented, along with other semantic features such as topic and focus, in any underlying structures from which syntactic behaviour is to be predicted in the most economical ways. It is noticeable that, so far, no definition of 'presupposition' has been suggested. And it is not clear that any of the writers so far mentioned have proposed what they would regard as definitions. What we have instead is a list of various salient features of presup9 The Kiparskys do admit certain exceptions to this generalization. For example, 'know' seems to be semantically factive but syntactically non-factive. The presuppositional features of 'know' form a very complicated question with which I shall not deal in this book, but shall, I hope, elsewhere.

THE INTRODUCTION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

15

positions emerging from the manner in which the concept has been introduced. These include at least the following: i. If S presupposes S' then it is 'odd' or 'inappropriate' to assert S unless one believes S' to be true. ii. If S presupposes S' then the negation of S does not constitute the negation of S', and S? does not constitute a query about S'. In other words presuppositions remain constant under negation and questioning. iii. Presuppositions of sentences relate to the syntactic behaviour of sentences in distinctive ways. iv. If S presupposes S' then S lacks truth value where S' is false. (This seems to be the most salient feature of all, sincf it has been used to justify speaking of presupposition in contrast to entailment (and, of course, assertion)). It will be wise to defer any closer examination of what is meant by 'presupposition' until we have seen how the notion has come to be used so that it covers a much wider range of cases than the ones so far encountered.

2 THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

So far we have encountered three alleged cases of presupposition. These were: (1) The king of France is bald presupposes (1') There is a king of France. (2) All of John's children are clever presupposes (2') John has children. (3) Harry regretted that he killed his grandma presupposes (3') He killed his grandma. Let us refer to these as paradigms of presupposition. In each case the salient features i-iv, listed at the end of the last chapter, belong. In this chapter I want to trace how the notion of presupposition has become extended. It is not that it has been redefined so as to cover new cases, for we have not yet encountered any definition. I mean, rather, that cases which are not paradigmatic, in that they

THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

17

lack one or more of the salient features, have come to be counted as instances of presupposition. Most important of all, perhaps, we find linguists and philosophers saying that S presupposes S' where it is clear, nevertheless, that S would have a truth value where S' is false. We find, in other words, that feature iv, which seemed the most important, does not belong to some of the cases to which the term 'presupposition' comes to be applied. Let us see how this extension has taken place in the works of two linguists, and in certain philosophical writings.

LAKOFF

He writes, in keeping with the notion of presupposition so far discussed, that "in general, a sentence may be either true or false only if all its presuppositions are true". 1 Suppose we say that a pair of sentences, S and S', pass the Truth Value Gap (TVG) test if and only if S lacks a truth value unless S' is true. Lakoff, then, seems to accept that one sentence presupposes another only if they pass the TVG test. And his first example indeed corresponds to what he says, and to our paradigms : (4) Pedro regretted being Norwegian presupposes (4') Pedro was Norwegian. Yet elsewhere Lakoff presents the following examples of presuppositions: 2

1 "On Generative Semantics", in Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology, edited by D . Steinberg and L. Jakobovits (Cambridge University, 1971), 235. 2 "Presupposition and Relative Well-formedness", in Semantics, edited by Steinberg and Jakobovits.

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THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

I

I

(5) John told Mary she was ugly, and then she insulted him presupposes (5') Telling a person she is ugly constitutes an insult. (6) Richard Nixon lost his cool, but the new president soon regained it. presupposes (6') Richard Nixon and the new president are the same person. (7) The creature whom I saw was large presupposes (7') The creature was human or human-like (This last example is an amendment of one of Lakoff's.) Yet none of these cases pass the TVG test; none are paradigmatic. In each case it is implausible to suppose that the presupposing sentence would lack a truth value where its presupposition is false. Consider (5). Suppose that, in some blue-stocking community, telling a girl she is ugly is no insult, so that (5') is false. Nevertheless if John told Mary she was ugly and Mary did insult John, (5) would surely count as true — though, of course, we would object to the intonational stresses used by the speaker. Again, no one would suggest that (7) would lack a truth value if the creature was a very non-human gila monster. If I did see a large gila monster, (7) is true, though I should not have used 'whom'. It may well be, in each case, that, as Lakoif remarks, a speaker uttering and committing himself to the truth of thefirstsentence will be committing himself to the truth of the second sentence (the presupposition)3. 3

"On Generative Semantics", Semantics 235 fn.

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19

Whether this is so or not depends upon how we interpret the phrase "committing himself to the truth of". But if we do accept it then it is clearly not equivalent to the claim that the first sentence lacks a truth value unless the second is true. For the moment I simply want to note the discrepancy between cases (5,5')-(7,7') and Lakoff's own characterization of presuppositions, and the discrepancy between these cases and our paradigms.

FILLMORE

He presents the following four examples of alleged presuppositions : 4 (8) That Harry is still living with his mother proves that he is a bad marriage risk presupposes (8') Harry is not an orphan. (9) Harry accused Mary of writing of the editorial presupposes (9') Harry regarded the writing of the editorial as 'bad'. (10) That person is not a bachelor, presupposes (10') That person is a male, human, adult. (11) Please open the door presupposes 4

"Types of Lexical Information", in Semantics, edited by Steinberg and Jakobovits.

20

THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

(11') The door is shut. Of these, only (8, 8') appears to be paradigmatic; for it is certainly arguable that we would not regard (8) as true or false if Harry were an orphan. (9,9') is much more dubious. I should think that if Harry did not think the writing of the editorial was 'bad', and showed no signs of condemning anyone for it, (9) is just false. (10, 10') is certainly not paradigmatic. If the person in question is a young girl, then (10) is true. And (11, 11') cannot be paradigmatic, for since (11) is not an indicative sentence capable of being true or false one cannot even raise the question of whether the TVG test is passed or not. Unlike Lakoff, Fillmore never states that presuppositions must pass the TVG test, so we cannot say that his examples are unfaithful to his account. Fillmore's own characterization of presupposition is as follows: We may identify the presuppositions of a sentence as those conditions which must be satisfied before the sentence can be used in any of the functions just mentioned [e.g. asking questions, making assertions, giving commands, etc.].5 A case like (11, 11') may well be one of presupposition under this characterization. I think, in fact, that some of Fillmore's other examples — e.g. that blaming X for Y presupposes that X is human — do not square with his account. But the present point is simply that Fillmore's examples range beyond our paradigm types, and that his characterization marks an extension beyond anything so far said about presuppositions. (We will return to his account in chapters 6 and 7.)

PHILOSOPHY

According to J. R. Searle — and I shall assume he is right — there 5

"Types of Lexical Information", Semantics.

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are a whole range of cases where some philosopher or another has claimed that a certain concept or range of concepts is inapplicable to certain states of affairs because the states of affairs fail to satisfy certain conditions... which are presuppositions of the applicability of the concepts.6 He then cites the following examples, among others, from the writings of various philosophers: (12) I bought the car voluntarily presupposes (12') There is a suspicion that there was something 'fishy' or aberrant in the circumstances of the purchase. (13) I remember my name presupposes (13') There is a suspicion that there is something abnormal about my condition (e.g. that I have amnesia). (14) I know that this is a tree presupposes (14') There are grounds for thinking it is not a tree. Searle rightly points out that in none of these cases would the alleged presupposing sentence lack a truth value if their presuppositions were false. None pass the TVG test. It would, no doubt, be peculiar to utter (12)-(14) unless one believed the presuppositions 6

"Assertion and aberration", in Symposium on J. L. Austin, edited by K. T. Fann (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 208.

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THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

— but that is another matter. (Some philosophers, in an attempt perhaps to reconcile these cases with the paradigms, have insisted that sentences such as (12)-(14) would lack truth value unless the presuppositions were true. For example, Ryle insists that it is simply absurd, and so neither true nor false, to say that one did something voluntarily unless there is suspicion of aberrance. 7 1 can only reply that I find this insistence remarkably implausible. If I bought my car under no pressure, (12) is surely true.) Searle also makes the point that it is not just sentences containing philosophically interesting terms like 'voluntarily' or 'remember' that behave like (12)-(14). If we are going to say that they presuppose (12')-(14'), it will be difficult to deny that: /

(15) The president is sober today presupposes (15') The president is often drunk, or that:

/

(16) Sam is breathing presupposes (16') There are grounds for thinking Sam is dead. Searle, it must be added, denies that any of these latter cases are genuine cases of presupposition. I agree (see chapter 8). The present point is simply to note how some philosophers have extended the scope of'presupposition' beyond the paradigms. The explanation for the extension of presuppositions beyond the paradigms is not too hard to find. Although most of the examples mentioned in this chapter do not pass the TVG test, they do, nonetheless, share some or all of the other salient characteristics noted 7

The Concept of Mind (Penguin, 1963), 68.

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23

on p. 15. Each, for example, is a case where it would certainly be 'odd' or 'inappropriate' to utter one sentence unless one believed the other to be true. In many cases, too, the negation or interrogative form of the one sentence would not be taken as a denial, or calling into question, of the truth of the other. Thus the negation of (9), as much as (9) itself, would suggest Harry thought the writing bad. And the interrogative form of (7), as much as (7) itself, would suggest that the speaker took the creature to be human. It is true, as well, that in most cases we could not say that the one sentence entails the other. In some instances, e.g. (8, 8'), this is because the sentences pass the TVG test, so that the falsity of the alleged presupposition does not entail the falsity of the presupposing sentence. In many instances, though, this is because the truth or falsity of the one sentence is in no way related to the truth or falsity of the other. It seems to me that (5)-(7), (10), and (12)-(16) could each be true, irrespective of the truth value of their alleged presuppositions. So, while most of the cases mentioned in this chapter are certainly not cases of entailment, the reasons why they are not are importantly different. Finally, it is true of several of the cases that significant syntactic predictions can be made on the basis of alleged presuppositions. In connection with cases like (7, 7'), Lakoff remarks that it is impossible to state economically the rules governing selection of relative pronouns independently of presuppositional features: .. .if one accepts that the distribution of who and which is a question to be dealt with in a field called 'grammar', then one's judgments of grammaticality seem to vary with one's assumptions and beliefs.8 If we do introduce presuppositions, we could devise some rule such as: "...the x, who(m)..." is grammatical if and only it is presupposed that x is human or human-like. Or, to be more faithful to Lakoff's account: speakers who judge "...the x, who(m)..." to be grammatical will be those who accept the presupposition that x is human or human-like. One would, moreover, expect that significant generalizations could be made concerning the relation between 8

"Presupposition and Relative Well-formedness", Semantics, 332.

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presuppositions and features of stress, in order to predict the acceptability of sentences like (5) or (15). One might expect rules of the form: it is permissible to make lexical item 'x' the locus of intonation in a sentence"... x..." only if it is presupposed that... It appears, then, that each new case of alleged presupposition shares some of the salient features belonging to our paradigms — though most of cases do not pass what seemed to be the salient feature, that of passing the TVG test. Presumably it is the first of these considerations which explains why the term 'presupposition' has been extended to cover these new cases. We have, in fact, an example of a fairly common form of concept-extension. A concept, C, is introduced to apply to cases which possess feature F. It is then noted that these cases also possess features F i . . . Fn. C then comes to apply to cases which possess most of Fi... Fn even if they lack F itself. The history of the word 'miracle' might be a case in point; originally applied only to events which were divinely authored, the word is now applied to events which are merely unusual and mysterious. Such types of concept-extension are scarcely rarer than the situation where C is applied to new cases because these are discovered to possess F. Nor is this sort of concept-extension always objectionable.9 But what should our reaction be to extension of the term 'presupposition' to cover non-paradigmatic cases? One reaction might be that of tolerance, a reaction belonging to what I shall call the 'Family Resemblance' view of presupposition. This view runs something like this: Presuppositions are a bit like games. There are all sorts of games, and there need be no single feature or set of features belonging to all games. We can call them all by the same name, however, because there are myriad, more or less loose, resemblances between them. Games of one type will be pretty much like games of a second type; the latter will be pretty similar to games of a third type - and so on. The resemblance between games of the first type and those of the nth type - football and tiddly9

For some good examples of this sort of concept-extension, see H. Putnam, "The Analytic and the Synthetic", in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. I l l (University of Minnesota, 1962).

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winks, say - may be very slight. Still, it is possible to trace a chain of resemblances connecting them. So, although we may have begun by applying 'game' to one type of activity, it is reasonable to apply it to other cases which have some intelligible resemblance to the original ones. 'Presupposition' may not be too different. We may at first apply it to a certain range of cases of a certain specific type; but as we note various, more or less loose, resemblances between these cases and others, it is reasonable to extend the scope of the term. No more than in the case of games will it be sensible to search for a single feature or set of features which must belong to all presuppositions. Strictly speaking, we should not perhaps talk of the concept of presupposition, if that suggests there is some unitary phenomenon involved. We should instead admit that 'presupposition' is a loose and vague term covering a whole range of significantly different, but intelligibly related, phenomena of language. On this view, then, there is nothing objectionable in applying the term to non-paradigmatic cases, for these bear at least some resemblance to the paradigms. In extending the term we are only doing what we often do, as the word 'game' bears witness. The Family Resemblance view does, I think, give a fair picture of the ordinary use of'presupposition'. Indeed, if we were interested in mapping this ordinary use we should have to cite many instances of presuppositions which are quite different from any so far mentioned. We would, for example, have to pay attention to the uses of the term in such sentences as: " W h e n I say the war will end next year, I am presupposing of course that the Chinese will not intervene", o r : " A presupposition of social science is that m a n can be a subject of scientific research". The objection to the Family Reserftblance view, f r o m the angle of our interests, is as follows: it is impossible to accept this view and, at the same time, treat presupposition as a useful theoretical concept to be employed within a theory of language. One cannot accept (a) that 'presupposition' is a vague term which refers to a wide range of cases between which there need be no feature or set of features in common, and (b) that 'presupposition' so understood is a fruitful and explanatory term in linguistic or logical theory. Consider, after all, some of the claims that linguists have made in connection with presupposition:

26

THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

PI Presupposition is an element that must appear in underlying semantic representations. P2 Presupposition is a semantic universal. P3 Presupposition is an element explanatory of a variety of syntactic phenomena. I take it these are meant as significant, substantial claims. But, I suggest, if 'presupposition' is understood along the lines of the Family Resemblance view, these claims become devoid of significance, or at any rate, would possess only the most limited interest. F o r consider the following claims, analogous to P1-P3 which a sociologist might make in connection with games: G 1 Games are a basic feature of society, which must be described in any description of the foundations of social structure. G 2 Games are universal social activities. G3 The playing of games is explanatory of many other types of social activity. A critic could easily throw cold water on these claims as follows: Which games are basic features of social structure? Tiddlywinks and scrabble? Surely not. And even if each game were a basic feature, it would be misleading to speak of games as a basic feature, for this would suggest that just one type of activity is being spoken of. The importance of horse-racing, however, is surely very different from that of cricket or of athletics. No doubt, too, games are played in each society, but this does not make it interesting to say that games are universal social activities. To say that the British playing cricket and the natives with their ritual archery contests are engaging in the same sort of activity would be totally misleading. One can make even the most disparate societies sound similar to one another if one describes them in terms of vague concepts which embrace radically diverse phenomena. This is what we do if we announce that all societies are similar in virtue of having games. The final claim is also uninteresting. It is not games as such which are explanatory of other social activities, but the particular games in question. No useful generalization could be stated concerning the relation of games in general to other areas of social life. Analogous criticism, it seems to me, could be levelled against a

THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

27

linguist who claims P1-P3, while refusing to go beyond a Family Resemblance account of presupposition: (1) It would be totally misleading to say that presupposition is an element in underlying semantic representation, as if there were some single type of element here. On the Family Resemblance view there would be no more justification for supposing that we are dealing with a single type of element here than there would be for treating the elements of Topic and Focus as a single type of element. (2) The claim that presupposition is a universal semantic feature will become trivial if the feature is so generic as to contain within it a wide variety of features. If presupposition is understood along Family Resemblance lines, there need be no substantial disagreement between a linguist who claims there are universal semantic elements and one who denies this. For the latter will claim that while one can always invent a very general term which will be applicable to elements in all languages, there will be no significance in this unless the elements belong to a significantly homogenous type. This will not be the case with the term 'presupposition' as understood on the Family Resemblance view. (3) If P3 is to be a significant claim, presupposition must once again be a relatively unitary notion. For it will always be possible to find some correlation between a semantic feature and a point of syntax. It is only if the semantic elements referred to as presuppositions form a significantly homogenous group that a genuine generalization is being offered when it is said that syntactic wellformedness depends upon presuppositional features of sentences. In connection with this last point, it is worth noting that if we allow 'presupposition' to cover cases which have some loose resemblance to more central cases, then there is the danger that we might start identifying presuppositions on the basis of syntactic and phonological features. If we do this, then correlations between presuppositions and such features will be guaranteed — but trivially so. For we shall only classify the semantic features in question as presuppositions after we have identified their syntactic and phonological effects. Chomsky, for example, says that "a presupposition (is) an expression derived by replacing a focus by a

28

variable". sentence

THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS 10

So, for example, if 'study' is the focus term in the

John is working in his study then what is presupposed is that John is working somewhere. Now a focus, according to Chomsky, is identified by its containing the intonational center of the sentence, i.e.: I

John is working in his study If so, one is ultimately identifying a sentence's presupposition on the basis of an intonational feature. In that case it will be trivially true that facts about presupposition correlate with facts about intonation. But then it will be impossible to explain such intonational features in terms of presuppositions. Lakoff's claim that "the rules involving stress placement" depend upon knowledge of presuppositional features of the sentences would have to be rejected unless presuppositions could be identified independently of stress features. If, then, we are to state significant connections between presuppositions and syntactic or phonological features, we must identify the presuppositions of sentences on some ground other than mere resemblance to central cases of a purely syntactic or phonological sort. I suggest, then, that presupposition cannot be treated as a Family Resemblance concept if it is to figure in significant theoretical claims like P1-P3. In other words, presupposition cannot be a fruitful theoretical concept if, at the same time, treated as a Family Resemblance concept. This leaves us with two possible reactions to the extension of presupposition traced earlier in the chapter — what I shall call the 'Austere' and the 'Catholic' reactions.

10

"Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Semantic Interpretation", Semantics, edited by Steinberg and Jakobovits, 205.

in

THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

29

THE 'AUSTERE' VIEW

According to this view the term 'presupposition' should be restricted to the paradigms alone. We should only say that S presupposes S' where S lacks a truth value unless S' is true. It will be admitted that this severely regimented use of 'presupposition' does not reflect the loose, ordinary uses of the term. But that is unimportant and only mildly unfortunate. The aim is to save presupposition as a precise and unitary concept that can play a role in logico-linguistic theory. I shall assess this Austere view in the next chapter.

THE 'CATHOLIC' VIEW

According to this view, both the Family Resemblance and Austere views are too pessimistic. For both assume the impossibility of providing a general, precise characterization of presupposition which would cover most, if not all, of the cases so far encountered. The Family Resemblance view, accepting this assumption, prefers to use the term 'presupposition' to cover all these cases, thus regarding the term as loose and vague. The Austere view, also accepting that assumption, prefers to give the term a precise sense, thus refusing to allow it to range over any cases but the paradigms. But, on the present view, this pessimistic assumption may be unwarranted. Perhaps, despite initial appearances, it is possible to provide a precise and general account of presuppositions which will allow the concept, nonetheless, to range over most of the cases, not just the paradigms, so far encountered. The account, one hopes, will be precise enough to warrant treating presupposition as a single type of semantic element; for treating the claim that presupposition is a semantic universal as significant; and for treating presupposition/ syntax relations as non-trivial. In chapters 4 and 51 shall assess two unsuccessful theories in the Catholic spirit — though my own view, later developed, will also be in this spirit. It might be useful to give schematic representations of the three views on the extension of presupposition which I have sketched.

30

THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

I.

The Family Resemblance View

F, F l , F2, F3 II.

PRii,

PRiii,

.PRn

F, F2, F4

F1,F3,F5

F,F5,F6

The Austere View PRi,

III.

F, F l , F2, F3

PRii,

PRiii,

PRn

The Catholic View PRii,

PRiii,

.PRn

F, F2, F4

Fl, F3, F5

F, F5, F6

p*

Let Pri...PRn be putative cases of presupposition. Let F...F6 be features of these cases, and F be the feature previously described as "passing the TVG test". (I) represents the view that there need be no single feature belonging to each case of presupposition, and that, in particular, F need not belong to each. (II) represents the view that the only relevant feature in determining whether we have cases of presupposition is F; so that PRiii is not admitted as a genuine case. (Ill) represents the view that while not all cases of presupposition must share the features, including F, so far encountered, nevertheless they are all alike in sharing some deeper, as yet unidentified, feature F*, which will justify us in treating PRi-PRn as cases of the same significant type.

THE EXTENSION OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

31

To summarize: (a) The term 'presupposition' has been extended by various linguists and philosophers to cover more than the original paradigms. (b) There seems to be tension between what various linguists say about presupposition; and there is tension between what any one of them says and the examples he cites. (c) One might react by admitting that 'presupposition' is a loose, vague term, incapable of sharp, precise specification. (d) This Family Resemblance view, if accepted, would render the concept of presupposition incapable of playing an explanatory role in logico-linguistic theory. (e) The alternatives would then be either to restrict the term to the paradigms, or to provide some general characterization of presuppositions which would permit us to count the concept as sufficiently precise for theoretical employment, while allowing it to range more widely than on the Austere view.

3 THE T R U T H CONDITION ACCOUNT

The motivation, sketched in Chapter 1, for treating (l')-(3') as presuppositions of (l)-(3), included in each case the consideration that one sentence would lack a truth value unless another were true. It seemed, indeed, as if that were the crucial consideration. Despite that, we saw in the last Chapter how presuppositions have been introduced which are not like the paradigms in this respect. In the face of such an extension, the purist may react by insisting that presupposition could only be a useful theoretical notion if restricted to the paradigms. I described such a reaction as the 'Austere' view. To remind ourselves: let us say that a pair of sentences, S and S', pass the TVG test if and only if S lacks a truth value unless S' is true. I shall say that anyone provides a 'Truth Condition Account' of presupposition if he holds: one sentence presupposes another if and only if they pass the TVG test. Strawson appears to have provided such an account at one time. For he writes ...if S' is a necessary condition of the truth or falsity of S... let us say... that S presupposes S'.1 And Lakoff, as we have seen (see p. 17), takes this view at one point, despite conflicts between it and some of his examples. It is not clear whether those who hold the Truth Condition view regard passing the TVG test as definitive of, or merely an invariant feature of, presuppositions. Strawson does speak of a 'sense' of the word 'presupposition' when he says that S presupposes S' only if, in 1

Introduction to Logical Theory (Methuen, 1952), 175.

THE TRUTH CONDITION ACCOUNT

33

our terminology, (S, S') passes the TVG test. I want to show that whether passing the test is regarded as definitive of presupposition or not, the Truth Condition Account fails. First, however, I want to look at two arguments against the Account which are not convincing. Argument A. If we accept (a) the Truth Condition Account, and (b) the view that all sentences of the form 'A is F', where 'A' is a referring expression, presuppose the existence of the A in question, then no sentence of that form will be true or false unless the A exists. But there are clear counterexamples to this conclusion. For example Pegasus has wings is surely true, and Sir Lancelot cut the Gordian knot is surely false, despite the fact that in each case the subject expression does not refer to something which exists. Reply. While the argument is valid, it only casts doubt upon the Truth Condition Account if we insist on accepting assumption (b). Yet, surely, the Pegasus and Lancelot examples are most plausibly treated as casting doubt upon that assumption. In others words, it just seems to be untrue that whenever a person uses a referring expression in a subject/predicate sentence he is presupposing the existence, in any normal sense of the term, of something referred to by that expression. Once we reject assumption (b), there is no reason, in addition, to reject (a), the Truth Condition Account. For someone who accepts that Account will reply that the reason why Pegasus has wings and

34

THE TRUTH CONDITION ACCOUNT

Sir Lancelot cut the Gordian knot have truth values is because they do not presuppose the existence of Pegasus and Sir Lancelot. Someone who makes this reply is no doubt obliged to explain why and when the use of subject expressions does not presuppose existence; but, assuming he can explain, he avoids the force of Argument A. Strawson does not qualify his claim that the use of referring expressions presupposes the existence of something referred to. He writes, for example, ...a statement containing a definite singular description is neither true nor false unless there exists something to which the speaker is referring and which answers the description.2 So Argument A may work ad hominem against Strawson — though he would, I think, be prepared to make the required qualifications. Argument B. The notion of presupposition is usually introduced by way of contrast with the notion of entailment. Yet if we accept the Truth Condition Account of presupposition, the two notions will not be distinct. On the contrary, presupposition will be a form of entailment. It can be shown, that is, that any case of presupposition is also one of entailment. For, on that Account, it is true, perhaps by definition, that if S has a truth value then S' must be true. Suppose, then, that S is true. In that case S, of course, has a truth value. So, by the definition of presupposition, S' must be true. So, if S is true then S' must be true. But that is what we mean by saying that S entails S'. In which case, if S presupposes S' then S also entails S'. 3 Reply. It must again be admitted that this argument holds ad hominem against Strawson. For Strawson does say that one sentence entails another where if each has a truth value, the second must be true if the first is true. 4 However, it is easy enough to amend one's 2

"Reply to Mr. Sellars", Philosophical Review 63 (1954), 224-225. Tenses have been changed. 3 This argument can be found in L. Linsky, Referring (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), 84. 4 Introduction to Logical Theory, 177.

THE TRUTH CONDITION ACCOUNT

35

description of entailment so that the argument will fail to show that cases of presupposition are also cases of entailment. We can provide either of the following amendments to achieve this: (1) We may say, as we did in Chapter 1, that S entails S' = df. if S and S' have truth values then (a) if S is true then S' must be true, and (b) if S' is false then S must be false. While it is the case that if a presupposing sentence is true so is the presupposed, it is not the case, in the present view, that if the presupposed sentence is false so is the presupposing one. Hence clause (b) in the definition of entailment does not apply to presupposition; so no case of presupposition is also one of entailment on the Truth Condition Account. (2) We may say, instead, that S entails S' = df. S and S' do have truth values, and if S is true then S' must also be true. Given this we can no longer say that S entails S' if S presupposes S', for the claim that S presupposes S' leaves it open as to whether S (and S') has a truth value. But in claiming that S entails S' we shall already be committed to saying that each sentence does have a truth value. S entailing S' is no longer a matter of what happens //each has a truth value.5 Either amendment is adequate for saving the Truth Condition Account from Argument B. I leave it to logicians to decide which is the preferable amendment. The problem with the second, I suppose, is that we can no longer tell, just by looking at two sentences, if one entails the other. We should also have to possess the extra-logical knowledge that each has a truth value. Since the logician can, for his purposes, simply assume that each sentence he encounters has a truth value, I do not see that this should be a particularly serious problem. In fact, though, I shall speak of entailment as I have all along, in terms of the definition given in the first amendment. There is, perhaps, one more innocuous objection against the Truth Condition Account which should be mentioned before progressing to more serious problems. As (ll)-(ll') shows, it is not only statement-making sentences which are said to carry presup5 This amendment is suggested by G. Nehrlich, "Presupposition and the Classical Logical Relations", Analysis 27 (1967).

36

THE TRUTH CONDITION ACCOUNT

positions, but also sentences used to command, question, beseech etc... Since such sentences are incapable of being true or false, how can an account of presupposition which makes appeal to truth values cover such cases? We will be examining the relation between assertions and other types of speech acts in Chapter 7, but the general lines of reply should be clear enough. Wherever we have a sentence used to command or question, we shall have a corresponding sentence which can be used to state, in the way that 'The door is open' corresponds to 'Open the door' or 'Is the door open?'. A proponent of the Truth Condition Account may then argue: where S" is not a statement-making sentence and S is its corresponding statement-making sentence, then S" presupposes S' if and only if S presupposes S'. In other words, once we have defined how a statement-making sentence presupposes another, other cases of presupposition can be defined on the basis of that. I now want to turn to what seem to me more serious, indeed insurmountable, problems for the Truth Condition Account. It would, naturally, be question-begging to attack the account on the grounds that it does not cover cases of presupposition such as (12, 12')-(16, 16') — for it is one of the alleged merits of the account that it dismisses such cases as not being genuine examples of presupposition ; that it lends precision where ordinary language does not. It would, however, be most pertinent to show that the account cannot deal adequately with the very paradigms which it is designed to cover. And this can be shown in a variety of ways. (a). It is not difficult to envision situations in which it would be quite natural to regard sentences like (l)-(3) as false (or even as true) where, nevertheless, their presuppositions are false. Suppose someone uttered (1) in reply to the request 'Name some notable men who are bald'. Surely (1), taken as the claim that the class of notable, bald-headed men contains the king of France as a member, is simply false. Plainly that class contains no such person. Again, suppose someone uttered (3) in reply to the question 'What did Harry do during the two hours after lunch each day of last week?'. If, in fact, Harry played squash each day, it is simply a false description of his post-prandial activities to say that these hours were spent

37

THE TRUTH CONDITION ACCOUNT

regretting the murder of his grandmother, whether or not his grandmother was actually murdered. It would be totally implausible to suggest that (1) and (3) no longer carry their presuppositions when uttered in such contexts. Not only would this be an ad hoc adjustment made to save the theory, it would also make it impossible to treat presupposition as a semantic feature of sentences. Instead, presuppositions would become highly variable, context-dependent features, belonging to a sentence at one moment, and not, in a different context, at another. What a sentence presupposes will depend upon who uttered it, when, and in reply to what. This would mean that the presuppositions could not be treated as semantic features in the way, for example, that quantificational features are. (This is not to deny that we can specify certain general situations — fictional contexts, for example — in which sentences do not carry their normal presuppositions.) (b). If (1) presupposes that there is a king of France, so surely does the following sentence (17) The king of France rode by this place this morning Yet most people, I feel, would regard (17) as being false. Whatever happened at this place this morning, it was not graced by the presence of an equestrian french king. The reason we may react differently to (1) and (17) may be this: to know if a person is bald or not we have to inspect him — and if there is no one to inspect, there is no one for it to be true or false of that he has hair. But to know that a place was not graced by somebody's presence we have only to inspect the place. Providing there is a place to be inspected, a sentence like (17) can be true or false.6 Analogous examples, no doubt, could be constructed with respect to (2) and (3). The point, once more, is that it would be totally ad hoc to suppose that (17), and sentences like it, do not carry the same presuppositions as sentences like (1) — yet, we see, they do not pass the TVG test. 6 See N . Wolterstorff, "Referring and Existing", Philosophical (1961).

Quarterly

11

38

THE TRUTH CONDITION ACCOUNT

(c). In (l)-(3) it is the expressions 'the king of France', 'all of John's children', and 'regretted' that carry the relevant presuppositions. Surely they also carry them in the following sentences in which, however, they occur in different syntactic positions: (18) He spent the morning interviewing the queen of England and the king of France (19) The ugliest people in the room are me and all of John's children (20) He met Harry — the one who regretted killing his grandma I am sure, though, that (18) and (19) would normally be regarded as false if their relevant presuppositions are false. It is just false, for example, that a person could have spent his morning interviewing the king of France. It seems to me that the truth or falsity of (20) is independent of whether Harry did kill his grandma. Providing it was clear whom the speaker intended to refer to, albeit mistakenly, by the expression 'Harry — the one who regretted killing his grandma', then (20) will be true or false depending upon whether this person was met or not. (In some circumstances we might even regard (18) and (19) as true, despite the falsity of their presuppositions. It is just that talking of a king of France or of John's children where there are no such people is such a radical way of misidentifying.)7 So it seems that (18)-(20) would be true or false even where (l')-(3') are false. It is arguable that the various counter-examples to the Truth Condition Account so far mentioned are not as different as they may appear. It is plausible, for example, to suggest that where (1) and (2), as well as (18) and (19), would be regarded as false, despite the falsity of their presuppositions, this is because the presupposition-carrying terms — 'the king of France' and 'all of John's children' — do not identify the topic of the sentences, what the sentences are in some sense primarily about. Where (1) is uttered in 7

See P. F. Strawson, "Identifying Reference and Truth Values", in Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology, edited by D. Steinberg and L. Jakobovits (Cambridge University, 1971).

THE TRUTH CONDITION ACCOUNT

39

reply to the request to name a notable, bald-headed person, it is reasonable to suggest that the topic is not the king, but the class of bald-headed notables. And in (18) and (19) it is surely the referents of 'he' and 'the ugliest people' which are naturally regarded as the topics. (17) may seem an exception to this suggestion; but even here it is arguable that the underlying structure is best represented by something like This place is (such that it was ridden by by the king of France this morning) where the form of representation is meant to suggest that 'this place' rather than 'the king of France' identifies the topic. It is also arguable that where sentences containing 'regretted that he killed his grandma' or 'regretted killing his grandma' would be regarded as false (or true), despite his not having killed her, this is because the phrases do not express the focus, in Halliday's sense 8 , of the sentences. In (20) one takes it that the new information provided is that someone met Harry, not that Harry regretted anything. And where (3) is uttered in reply to the question about how Harry spends his time after lunch, the new information provided is not that Harry regrets, but that he has regrets after lunch each day. (d). Some readers may not share my intuitions as to which of the various sentences mentioned pass the TVG test. There are some who might regard (18)-(20) as truth-valueless, just as there are some who might regard (l)-(3) as always having truth values. But such differences in intuitions would merely point to another difficulty in the Truth Condition Account. One of the merits of that account, supposedly, was its precision, its clear delimitation of genuine cases of presupposition. But if the T V G test — 'does S fail to have a truth value where S' is false?' — is a slippery one, in that different people give different answers to the question posed, then it cannot be pretended that the account does provide any precise criterion. We may have been given a definition of 'presupposition', but little is 8 See, for example, his "Some Aspects of the Thematic Organization of the English Clause", RM-5224-PR, Rand Corporation (1967).

40

THE TRUTH CONDITION ACCOUNT

gained if we are unable to apply the definiens in any generally consistent manner. The fact that ordinary people do not agree as to when a case passes the TVG test would not matter if there were some clear theoretical pressure dictating the decision in each case. If, for example, it could be demonstrated that there was some inconsistency in supposing that a sentence has a truth value under certain conditions then we could ignore the conflicting intuitions of people as to whether it does have a truth value. It is very difficult, however, to imagine that such a demonstration could be forthcoming. There seems to be no obvious theoretical pressure dictating that sentences whose presuppositions fail must be false, or must be truth-valueless. It might be argued, for instance, that if (1) were treated as false where (1') is false, then the denial of (1) would be true. But the sentence The king of France is not bald is not true. So either this sentence is not the denial of (1), or (1) is not false. Surely, however, 'the king of France is not bald' is the denial of (1). It is only if we counted the following as the denial of (1) that (1) could be regarded as false where (1') is false: Either the king of France is not bald, or there is no king of France But to suppose that this is the denial of (1) is wrong.9 The trouble with this sort of argument is that it begs the question. For if a person does insist that (1) is false where