{"id":1117,"date":"2022-04-06T09:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T07:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/support.centreforelites.com\/what-is-presupposition\/"},"modified":"2024-03-14T22:15:17","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T20:15:17","slug":"what-is-presupposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/support.centreforelites.com\/en\/what-is-presupposition\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Presupposition?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

 Speakers or writers usually design their message on the assumption that the hearer or reader already has a degree of the knowledge of what is being communicated. What the writer assumes the reader already knows about the subject and the context of the information is known as a <\/span>presupposition.<\/i> Inference as we saw in the last unit is actually based on presupposition because whether inference is right or wrong, the reader is acting upon some relevant information about the subject. Take the headline \u201cWho killed Dele Giwa?\u201d for example. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This question presupposes that <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(a) the writer and reader know whom Dele Giwa was <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(b) both know that Dele Giwa actually got killed and that his killers are unknown <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(c) the unknown assassins might be discovered <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(d) the reader has the right to know and may do something about the information he gets.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article we shall be looking more at how presupposition is based on shared assumption between speaker and hearer and how some clauses (especially introduced by when<\/i>) give rise to presupposition. We shall also be looking at how to differentiate between semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Table of Contents<\/p>\n