Pragmatics:

Presupposition and Conventional Implicature

Semantics I
LALS 3505/PHIL 3506
Ash Asudeh
Carleton University
November 24, 2008
1 Presupposition
Presupposition is an important topic in pragmatics, especially formal pragmatics, but there is a surprising
lack of agreement on a suitable denition of the term (Beaver 1997, 2001). Nevertheless, its good enough for
our purposes to adopt the following informal denition from Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet (2000: 349):
(1) Presupposition
(An utterance of) a sentence S presupposes a proposition p if (the utterance of) S implies p and
further implies that p is somehow already part of the background against which S is considered.
A presupposition is a proposition that is part of the common ground (shared assumptions) of the speaker and
hearer(s). Presuppositions thus contrast with what is asserted by an utterance.
The distinction between assertion and presupposition and the role of shared assumptions in presupposition
is claried by the following examples from Heim and Kratzer (1998: 77):
(2) a. John is absent again today.
b. Today is not the rst time that John is absent.
c. John is absent today, and that has happened before.
All of these statements indicate that (the speaker believes that) a) John is absent today and b) John has been
absent before. However, they assume different knowledge on the part of the hearer. If the hearer knows that
John has been absent before but does not know that John is absent today, then (2a) is appropriate, but (2b) is
not: (2a) presupposes that John has been absent before and it asserts that he is absent today. On the other
hand, if the hearer knows that John is absent today but does not know that John has been absent before, then
(2b) is appropriate, but (2a) is not: (2b) presupposes that John is absent today and asserts that he has been
absent before. Lastly, if the hearer does not know that John is absent today and also does not know that he
has been absent before, then (2c) is appropriate, but not the other two: (2c) does not presupposes knowledge
of Johns absence today or his previous absences and instead asserts both that he is absent today and that he
has been absent before. In other words, a rough generalization is that one asserts new information (new to
the conversation) and presupposes old information. We will see in section 1.5, though, that presuppositions
can also be accommodated as new information.
These examples also make it clear that a presupposition is a kind of implication or entailment; this is also
explicit in Chierchia and McConnell-Ginets denition, which states that S implies p. In other words, a
presupposition is a proposition that follows from a statement. However, we will see that presuppositions have
various properties that set them appart from actual semantic entailments.
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Semantics I November 24, 2008 Presupposition & Conventional Implicature
1.1 Projection
The key difference between presupposition and regular entailment is that presuppositions project from a va-
riety of environments (presupposition holes), whereas entailments do not. For example, consider example
(3), which is taken from Beaver (2001: 13) but is originally due to Frege, and its entailment (4).
(3) Whoever discovered the elliptic form of the planetary orbits died in misery.
(4) Somebody died in misery.
Any utterance of (3) commits the speaker to (4): (4) is an entailment of (3).
Now consider the following three examples, also from Beaver (2001: 13):
(5) Whoever discovered the elliptic form of the planetary orbits did not die in misery.
(6) If whoever discovered the elliptic form of the planetary orbits died in misery, he should have kept
his mouth shut.
(7) Perhaps whoever discovered the elliptic form of the planetary orbits died in misery.
Example (5) is the negation of (3), (6) is a conditional that contains (3) as its antecedent, and (7) embeds (3)
under a modal adverb of possibility, perhaps. None of these statements entail (4). This is plainest in the case
of the negation, but you should be able to see that it is also true in the other two cases.
Nevertheless, all of (3), (5), (6) and (7) seem to imply the following proposition:
(8) Somebody discovered the elliptic form of the planetary orbits.
In particular the four statements all presuppose (8).
The contrast between the presupposition (8) and the entailment (4) is that the former projects from
the embedded contexts in (57), whereas the latter does not. In other words, presuppositions project from
certain environments including, but not limited to, negated, conditional, and modal contexts whereas
entailments do not. This is the projection property of presuppositions.
Environments such as negation, conditionals, and modals therefore provide tests of presupposition: if a
sentence S implies p and the implication holds when S is embedded in one of these environments, then p is a
presupposition of S.
1.2 Truth-conditional effects
Much of the initial philosophical work on presupposition concerned the interpretation of denite descriptions,
particularly non-referring denite descriptions, as in Russells famous example, which we looked at earlier
in the course:
(9) The King of France is bald.
According to Russells semantics for denite descriptions, this sentence is false (Russell 1905). This then
equally commits Russell to the truth of its negation:
(10) The King of France is not bald.
The trouble is that this does not really reect our semantic intuitions, as originally persuasively discussed
by Strawson (1950). In particular, many speakers feel that neither (9) nor its negation (10) is true or false.
Furthermore, speakers who are comfortable with the falsity of (9) nevertheless do not feel that (10) is true.
Theres something funny going on.
In fact, both (9) and (10) presuppose the following:
(11) There is a King of France.
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Semantics I November 24, 2008 Presupposition & Conventional Implicature
This is, of course, a false presupposition. It is arguably the fact that (9) and (10) have this presupposition
that makes their truth value indeterminable. If this is so, then presuppositions affect truth values: In order
for a proposition to be judged as true, its presuppositions must be true.
A common basic treatment of the truth-conditional effects of presuppositions (which is ultimately in-
adequate, as argued extensively by Beaver 2001), is to allow propositions to lack truth values when their
presuppositions are false. One particular version of this idea is put forward by Heim and Kratzer (1998: 77)
as follows (where phi is any expression that denotes a truth value):
(12) = 1 is true
has no semantic value
= 0

is false
According to (12), there is no longer a one-to-one correspondence between the truth value 0 and the notion of
falsehood: expressions without truth values are also false. This accounts for the intuitions of those speakers
who feel that (9) and (10) are both false.
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No matter how one tries to capture the fact, it is evident that a presupposition affects the truth value of the
proposition that is asserted by the utterance/sentence that gives rise to the presupposition. In short, presup-
positions affect truth values. We will see in section 2 that this is the key difference between presuppositions
and conventional implicatures.
1.3 Triggers
Many (but not all) presuppositions are triggeredby specic lexical items or grammatical constructions. Some
of the more common triggers and examples are listed here:
(13) Denite descriptions
a. The King of France is bald.
The X presupposes that there is an X.
(14) Factive verbs
a. Don regrets that he hurt Gerrys feelings.
b. Don knows that he hurt Gerrys feelings.
FACTIVE X presupposes that X.
(15) Clefts
a. It was Mary who sneezed.
b. Its Georges obliviousness that bothers me.
It was X that/who Y-ed presupposes that something Y-ed.
(16) Wh-questions
a. Who did they interrogate?
b. What did they nd?
A wh-question presupposes the existence of an entity answering the question (Beaver 2001: 11).
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Note, though, that it does not capture the intutions of speakers who feel that neither (9) nor (10) is true or false.
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Semantics I November 24, 2008 Presupposition & Conventional Implicature
1.4 Cancellation
It is possible to cancel a presupposition, for example by explicitly denying it. It is not possible to cancel an
entailment.
Consider the following example:
(17) John managed to stop.
This sentence entails that John stopped and the verb manage triggers the presupposition that John tried to
stop. That is, normally the use of the verb manage implies that there was effort on the subjects part to bring
about the entailment.
However, the presupposition can be cancelled, as shown by the well-formedness of the following exam-
ple:
(18) Well, I suppose you could say that John managed to stop in time, but he wasnt really trying, you
know it was pure luck.
Compare the ill-formedness of cancelling the entailment:
(19) #Well, I suppose you could say that John managed to stop in time, but he didnt stop in time.
Heres another example of cancelling a presupposition. Possessive descriptions like Johns children create
a presupposition, in this case that John has children. But consider the following discourse:
(20) A: Theyve kidnapped Johns children.
B: That cant be true: John doesnt have any children.
Now compare a similar entailment, namely that if John has three children then he has children. It is not
possible to cancel this entailment:
(21) #John has three children. However, he does not have children.
In sum, presuppositions are cancellable, which further sets them apart from general entailments.
1.5 Accommodation
Presuppositions are generally required to be part of the common ground or shared assumptions of the speaker
and hearer(s). However, in certain circumstances a presupposition can be accommodated or backgrounded,
i.e. added to the common ground, even if it is new information.
Consider the following example:
(22) The King of Buganda is in town.
Suppose the hearer has no idea where Buganda is or whether it has a monarchy. On the general Gricean
assumption that the speaker is being truthful, the hearer will then accommodate the presupposition that there
is a King of Buganda. Of course, the hearer will not accommodate a presupposition that conicts with
his or her background knowledge (unless the knowledge is shaky and/or the speaker is considered to be
authoritative, etc.): for example, if the sentence were instead The King of France is in town most informed,
competent adult hearers would not accommodate the presupposition.
2 Conventional implicature
Conventional implicatures were identied by Grice along with the conversational implicatures driven by
the Maxims.
2
However, conventional implicatures had not received much attention in formal pragmatics until
2
It is unfortunate that the terms conventional implicature and conversational implicature are easily mixed up, so try to remember
that conversational implicatures have to do with exploiting the Grices maxims, whereas conventional implicatures do not.
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Semantics I November 24, 2008 Presupposition & Conventional Implicature
recently (Potts 2005). In fact, conventional implicatures were generally not distinguished from presupposi-
tions in early work (Karttunen and Peters 1979), because like presuppositions conventional implicatures
are implications of utterances that are independent of the utterances general entailments, i.e. assertions.
Here is what Grice had to say about conventional implicature (Grice 1975: 4445):
In some cases, the conventional meaning of the words used will determine what is implicated,
besides helping to determine what is said. If I say (smugly), He is an Englishman; he is, therefore,
brave, I have certainly committed myself, by virtue of the meaning of my words, to its being the
case that his being brave is a consequence (follows from) his being an Englishman. But while I
have said that he is an Englishman and said that he is brave, I do not want to say that I have said
(in the favoured sense) that it follows from his being an Englishman that he is brave, though I
have certainly indicated, and so implicated, that this is so. I do not want to say that my utterance
of this sentence would be, strictly speaking, false should the consequence in question fail to hold.
This passage is revealing of the misleading apparent similarity between conventional implicature and presup-
position.
As indicated by the rst sentence of the quote above, like presuppositions, conventional implicatures are
triggered by certain lexical items and grammatical devices (although these are distinct fromthe presupposition
triggers). In the case of Grices example, it is the word therefore that triggers the conventional implicature.
This is also apparent if we consider two of the principal cases of conventional implicature identied and
analyzed by Potts:
(23) Supplements (appositives, parentheticals)
a. Lance Armstrong, a Texan, won the Tour de France. Appositive indenite
Assertion: Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France.
Conventional implicature: Lance Armstrong is a Texan.
b. Lance Armstrong, who is a Texan, won the Tour de France. Appositive
(non-restrictive)
relative clause
Assertion: Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France.
Conventional implicature: Lance Armstrong is a Texan.
(24) Expressives (epithets, evaluative modiers)
a. Agent Mills found George passed out by the couch and said the idiot had choked
on a pretzel. Epithet, the idiot = George
Assertion: Agent Mills found George passed out by the couch and said George had choked
on a pretzel.
Conventional implicature: The speaker thinks George is an idiot.
b. Soccer Moms love their damn SUVs. Negative evaluative adjective
Assertion: Soccer Moms love their SUVs.
Conventional implicature: The speaker feels negatively about SUVs.
Supplement conventional implicatures are identied by a particular intonation and expressives are associated
with certain lexical items (e.g., damn) or certain uses of lexical items or phrases (e.g., a pronominal-like use
of the idiot ).
It is also apparent from the quote that Grice means conventional implicatures, like presuppositions, not
to be assertions or general entailments. This is what he means when he writes that he has not said (in
the favoured sense) that the individual in questions bravery is a consequence of his Englishness. This is
similarly indicated in the examples in (23) and (24) by separating the assertion from the implicature.
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Semantics I November 24, 2008 Presupposition & Conventional Implicature
The nal sentence of the quote is, however, the key to the distinction between conventional implicatures
and presuppositions, as argued extensively and persuasively by Potts (2005): presuppositions affect truth, but
conventional implicatures do not. This is readily apparent if we contrast a presupposition trigger, such as a
denite description, with a conventional implicature trigger, such as a supplement (in this case, an appositive
denite description):
(25) The King of France, Jacques Chirac, is in town.
Main Clause presupposition: There is a King of France.
Main Clause conventional implicature: The King of France is Jacques Chirac.
(26) Jacques Chirac, the King of France, is in town.
Main Clause presupposition:
Main Clause conventional implicature: Jacques Chirac is the King of France.
Presupposition inside conventional implicature: There is a King of France.
Let us suppose that Jacques Chirac, the President of France, is indeed in town. We then observe that, de-
spite the fact that its conventional implicature is false, the sentence in (26) is true. In contrast, the failed
presupposition of (25) means that the sentence cannot be judged as true. Notice that, due to the fact that the
conventional implicature in (26) contains a failed presupposition, we cannot determine the truth value of the
conventional implicature; however, since the conventional implicature does not impact on the truth of its host
sentence, this means that (26) is nevertheless either true or false (depending on whether Chirac is in town at
the time of utterance).
In sum, conventional implicatures are like presuppositions in being triggered and being separate from
assertions. However the key difference between the two is that, unlike presuppositions, conventional impli-
catures do not affect the truth of their context.
References
Beaver, David I. 1997. Presupposition. In Johan van Benthem and Alice ter Meulen, eds., Handbook of
Logic and Language, 9391008. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Co-published with Elsevier Science B.V.,
Amsterdam.
. 2001. Presupposition and Assertion in Dynamic Semantics. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Chierchia, Gennaro, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2000. Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Seman-
tics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2nd edn.
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, eds., Speech Acts, vol. 3 of
Syntax and Semantics, 4358. New York: Academic Press.
Heim, Irene, and Angelika Kratzer. 1998. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
Karttunen, Lauri, and Stanley Peters. 1979. Conventional implicature. In Choon-Kyu Oh and David A.
Dinneen, eds., Presupposition, vol. 11 of Syntax and Semantics, 156. New York: Academic Press.
Potts, Christopher. 2005. The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Russell, Bertrand. 1905. On denoting. Mind 14: 479493.
Strawson, Peter. 1950. Referring. Mind 59: 320344.
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