Topic: Introduction to Semantics
Subject: Entailment and Presupposition
Week/Lecture No.: 8
Class: BS English
Semester: 4th
Teacher: Kashmalah Ashraf
Department of English
Institute of Southern Punjab, Multan
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ENTAILMENT AND PRESUPPOSITION
• One of the principal difficulties that one faces when
dealing with aspects of language is how to distinguish
between entailment and presupposition.
• As a matter of fact, presupposition is what the speaker
assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance
whereas entailment is what logically follows from what
is asserted in the utterance.
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Entailment
• Crystal (1998: 136) defines it as "a term refers to a relation
between a pair of sentences such that the truth of the
second sentence necessarily follows from the truth of the
first, e.g. I can see a dog entails 'I can see an animal'. One can
not both assert the first and deny the second".
• Lyons (1977: 85) treats entailment from a logical point of
view. For instance, the sentence John is a bachelor entails
three other sentences as follows:
• 1.a. John is unmarried.
• b. John is male.
• c. John is adult.
3
Entailment continued…
• The relations between such words as bachelor and
unmarried, male, adult can be handled in truth-
conditional terms (Kempson, 1977: 38). The truth
conditions in John is a bachelor are included in the
conditions for John is unmarried, John is male and John
is adult.
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Background entailment and foreground entailment
• According to Yule (2000: 33), there are two types of entailment: background entailment
and foreground entailment. In the example:
• Bob chased three rabbits.
• The speaker is necessarily committed to the truth of a very large number of background
entailments, only some of them are presented as follows:
• a. Someone chased three rabbits
• b. Bob did something to three rabbits
• c. Bob chased three of something
• d. Something happened
• On any occasion of utterance 1, the speaker will indicate how these entailments are to
be ordered, i.e., the speaker will communicate which entailment is assumed to be more
important for interpreting intended meaning, than any others.
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Background entailment and foreground
entailment continued…
• For instance, in uttering sentence below, the speaker indicates that
the foreground entailment is that Bob chased a certain number of
rabbits:-
• a. Bob chased THREE rabbits.
• b. BOB chased three rabbits.
• In (b), the focus shifts to Bob, and the main assumption is that
'someone chased rabbits’.
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Entailment can also be syntactic in origin
• Entailment can also be syntactic in origin. Active and
passive versions of the same sentence will entail one
another (Finch, 2000: 164), for example:
• 6.a. John killed Bill.
• b. Bill was killed by John.
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Correspondence between entailment and hyponymy
There is a precise correspondence between entailment and hyponymy. "If
two assertions differ only in the substitution of a hyponym for a
superordinate term, then one of the assertions entails the other" (Allan,
1986: I 181)
• Thus, hyponymy involves entailment. For instance, the utterance This is
a tulip entails This is a Flower and This is scarlet entails This is red.
This is true since hyponymy is the relationship between specific and
general lexical items so that the former is included in the latter (Zuber,
2002: 2).
• Another example is the following pair of sentences:
• a. Jack killed Ann.
• b. Ann died.
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Presupposition
• Hudson (2000: 321) states that "a presupposition" is something assumed
(presupposed) to be true in a sentence which asserts other information".
• In the following example, sentence (a) presupposes sentence (b).
• 1. a. The child sneezed again.
• b. The child had sneezed before.
• The first sentence presupposes the information in the second, and this is
apparent in the fact that if the first sentence is negated, the truth of the
second remains unchanged:
• 1.c. The child did not sneeze again.
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Presupposition continued…
• 2. a. Mary's hat is red.
• b. Mary's hat is not red.
• Although these two sentences have opposite meanings,
the underlying presupposition, 'Mary has a hat', remains
true (the same). This case is called by linguists as
"constancy under negation", which is one of the
properties used in pragmatics for testing presuppositions.
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Types of presupposition according to Yule
• Yule states six types of presupposition which are:
• the existential,
• the factive,
• the non-factive,
• the lexical,
• the structural and
• the counterfactual.
• The existential presupposition is assumed to be present
either in possessive constructions (such as: your car
presupposes (») you have a car) or in any definite noun phrase
as in using expressions like: the King of Sweden, the cat, etc.
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Types of presupposition according to Yule
Continued…
• The second type of presupposition is called factive presupposition since
some words are used in the sentences to denote facts, such as know,
realize, regret, glad, odd and aware. For example,
• Everybody knows that John is ill presupposes that John is ill.
• The third type of presupposition is called non-factive presupposition,
which is assumed not to be true. Verbs like dream, imagine and pretend
are used with the presupposition that what follows is not true. e.g. John
dreamed that he was rich presupposes that John was not rich.
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Types of presupposition according to Yule
continued….
• There are forms which may be treated as the source of lexical presupposition,
such as manage, stop, and start. In this type, the use of one form with its asserted
meaning is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that another (non-
asserted) meaning is understood. When one says that someone managed to do
something, the asserted meaning is that the person succeeded in some way.
• structural presuppositions: In this case, certain sentence structures have been analyzed
as conventionally and regularly presupposing that part of the structure is assumed to be
true (Yule,2000: 29). For instance, the wh- forms (i.e. when, where, etc.) can be used in
this type, as in When did John leave? Presupposes that John left.
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Types of presupposition according to Yule
continued…
• The last type is called a counter-factual presupposition,
in which what is presupposed is not only true, but is the
opposite of what is true, or contrary to facts. For example,
the sentence:
• If you were his friend you would have helped him
presupposes that you are not his friend. A conditional
structure of this sentence presupposes that the information
in the if-clause is not true of the time of utterance.
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