Malone Engl 241 UI Spring 2020 Intro Linguistics Semantics Part IV Propositions and Presupposition.

1. Part IV: Proposition and Presupposition
SEMANTICS: LANGUAGE AND
MEANING

2. SEMANTICS is the study of how language acquires
meaning. It is a complex field, but our overview will
break semantics into four essential parts:
1. Sense and Reference
2.What Definitions Offer
3.Relationships between Words
4.Propositions and Presuppositions

3. PROPOSITIONS

4. • This part’s actually pretty simple if you understand this:When I talk about “truth” here, I
don’t mean honest or factual. Instead, I’ll talk about “truth conditions,” which just means,
“What needs to be true in order for this utterance to be meaningful?”
• Indeed, one of the ways linguists analyze meaning is by asking if it is possible to imagine the
circumstances in which an utterance is true.We treat utterances (or, expressed thoughts) as
propositions. The conditions for the proposition to be meaningful are called truth
conditions or entailments.

5. PROPOSITION: THE SKY IS GREEN
Obviously that’s not true, but we can easily picture a green sky. Furthermore, we can
imagine the conditions that would need to be true in order for the proposition to be
meaningful.
• Truth Conditions:
• There is a sky
• There is a color
• Green is a possible color
• The thing we recognize as sky is the color green
Okay… who cares?
What I’m getting at here is: This proposition is meaningful, even if it’s not true.And
this is precisely how we get away with very important linguistic feats like LYING. More on
that in Pragmatics!

6. READ THE TEXT
I don’t mean for these slides to reinvent the textbook. Please be sure to read all
of 7.4, but especially textboxes 7.5, 7.6, and 7.7 (pages 172-174).These are
excellent brief explanations of the following, which are key points I want you to
understand:
• Not all meaningful expressions are propositions
• The difference between truth and meaning
• It is possible to make grammatical utterances that are meaningless (or, the
relationship between Syntax and Semantics).

7. CHALLENGE
• After reading the textbook, write some basic propositions.Try to include some
which are true and meaningful and some which are untrue but still meaningful.
Then, write the truth conditions necessary for the proposition to be
meaningful.A pretty exhaustive example of this occurs on pages 173-175 for
the example: She kissed him. See especially page 73 for a list of four truth
conditions.
• In the meantime, what do you think are some truth conditions for the
proposition: I teach your linguistics class ? I’ll go over these on the next slide…

8. PROPOSITION: I TEACH YOUR
LINGUISTICS CLASS
The more you narrow down, the more – I’ll say it! – obnoxious this becomes.
First you need to account for existence.
• I exist, you exist, classes exist, teaching is a possible activity
Then, you need to account for combining these elements.
• You are in a class, I teach a class, linguistics is a class, the class I teach is
linguistics, you are in the linguistics class that I teach, etc.
I’m being what I call “obnoxiously precise” here.And frankly it can feel a little
excessive to do this sort of exercise.That feeling likely comes from how intuitive
our sense of meaning is. Still, it is exactly this exercise that helps us distinguish
between truth and meaning; grammaticality and meaning – and more. Our
ability to break down propositions into their entailments is essential to
analyzing what makes language meaningful.

9. PRESUPPOSITION

10. “The White House is giving its
daily Covid-19 briefing again.”

11. Whether or not you’ve been following the news, I bet you understood that last slide perfectly well. I’m confident you understood
me because of a linguistic phenomenon called presupposition.
Basically, there are certain assumptions my utterance makes on a linguistic level. I am assuming (or expecting) that you will know
what theWhite House is, what Covid-19 is, what press briefings are, etc. In this way, analyzing presupposition is much like looking
for truth conditions of propositions.
However, presupposition is especially useful for analyzing implicature. I’m ending the Semantics unit on this note because we’ll
talk way more about implicature in our Pragmatics unit.
For now, suffice to say, the most interesting part of the utterance on the previous slide is that word,“again.” Without context,
without us having spoken about it, I am presupposing your knowledge that theWhite House has given these briefings daily. OR,
even if you don’t know that, I am presupposing that you will accommodate my claim. If you haven’t been following the news, then
for all you know, theWhite House has never given a briefing! I might have lied to you, but since my claim isn’t especially
outrageous, you were likely willing to accept it.
I really ought to stop there, or I’m going to spoil Pragmatics for you! Listen to conversations you hear/read in person or through
the media.Are there any utterances with particularly obvious presupposition?You’ll be surprised at just how often we use this!To
start, the “Stop and Reflect 7.8” box on page 183 provides some excellent examples to analyze.

12. END
PPT 4 of 4 written for the Semantics unit.
Engl 241-01, 02, Spring 2020 at University of Idaho.
Professor Brian Malone