For other uses, see Presupposition (disambiguation).
In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or PSP) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include:
Jane no longer writes fiction.
Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction.
Have you stopped eating meat?
Presupposition: you had once eaten meat.
Have you talked to Hans?
Presupposition: Hans exists.
A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context. It will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.
Crucially, negation of an expression does not change its presuppositions: I want to do it again and I don't want to do it again both presuppose that the subject has done it already one or more times; My wife is pregnant and My wife is not pregnant both presuppose that the subject has a wife. In this respect, presupposition is distinguished from entailment and implicature. For example, The president was assassinated entails that The president is dead, but if the expression is negated, the entailment is not necessarily true.
of presuppositions include: Jane no longer writes fiction. Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction. Have you stopped eating meat? Presupposition: you...
examines the presuppositions on which worldviews are based, and invites comparison and contrast between the results of those presuppositions. It claims...
fallacy of presupposition, or plurium interrogationum (Latin, 'of many questions') is a question that has a complex presupposition. The presupposition is a...
attempts to establish normative or ethical truths by examining the presuppositions of discourse. The ethical theory originated with German philosophers...
addressee supports one of these three teams. The addressee may cancel this presupposition with an answer like "None of them". In English, alternative questions...
is simply called off. The most basic of these idealized presuppositions is the presupposition that participants in communicative exchange are using the...
form Metalanguage Mental representation Modality (natural language) Presupposition Principle of compositionality Property Sign Sense and reference Speech...
market socialism models might be based have logical flaws or unworkable presuppositions. These criticisms have been incorporated into the models of market...
not in itself make the question fallacious. Only when some of these presuppositions are not necessarily agreed to by the person who is asked the question...
sign, provided the respondent with a presupposition that there was a stop sign in the scene. This presupposition increased the number of people responding...
form Metalanguage Mental representation Modality (natural language) Presupposition Principle of compositionality Property Sign Sense and reference Speech...
description of these elements as "gnostic" is based mainly upon the presupposition that the text as a whole is a "gnostic" gospel, and this idea itself...
form Metalanguage Mental representation Modality (natural language) Presupposition Principle of compositionality Property Sign Sense and reference Speech...
form Metalanguage Mental representation Modality (natural language) Presupposition Principle of compositionality Property Sign Sense and reference Speech...
Testament theologian Frank Stagg. He describes them as some basic presuppositions, tenets, and concerns common among the New Testament writers, giving...
contributor to the field of Christian apologetics, as he popularized the presuppositional method of Cornelius Van Til. He is the father of David L. Bahnsen,...
not as doubtful but as certain (a presupposition is never doubtful, for the very reason that it is a presupposition), since otherwise I would not begin...
Reformed theologian, who is credited as being the originator of modern presuppositional apologetics. A graduate of Calvin College, Van Til later received his...
typical texts. A distinction can also be made between iterability and presupposition. Iterability makes reference to the "repeatability" of certain text...
form Metalanguage Mental representation Modality (natural language) Presupposition Principle of compositionality Property Sign Sense and reference Speech...
form Metalanguage Mental representation Modality (natural language) Presupposition Principle of compositionality Property Sign Sense and reference Speech...
calorimetry for measurement of quantity of energy transferred as heat. This presupposition is essential but is explicitly labeled neither as a law of thermodynamics...
Global Information