On the nature of presupposition: a normative speech act account. (English) Zbl 1475.03027
Summary: In this paper I provide a new account of linguistic presuppositions, on which they are ancillary speech acts defined by constitutive norms. After providing an initial intuitive characterization of the phenomenon, I present a normative speech act account of presupposition in parallel with Williamson’s analogous account of assertion. I explain how it deals well with the problem of informative presuppositions, and how it relates to accounts for the Triggering and Projection Problems for presuppositions. I conclude with a brief discussion of the consequences of the proposal for the adequacy of Williamson’s account of assertion.
MSC:
| 03A05 | Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations |
| 03B65 | Logic of natural languages |
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