Presupposition
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Presupposition
In linguistics and philosophy, a presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include: * ''Jane no longer writes fiction.'' ** Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction. * ''Have you stopped eating meat?'' ** Presupposition: you had once eaten meat. * ''Have you talked to Hans?'' ** Presupposition: Hans exists. A presupposition is information that is linguistically presented as being mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee. This may be required for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context, but it is not uncommon for new information to be encoded in presuppositions without disrupting the flow of conversation (see accommodation below). A presupposition remains mutually known by the speaker and addressee whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexi ...
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Entailment (pragmatics)
Linguistic entailments are entailments which arise in natural language. If a sentence ''A'' entails a sentence ''B'', sentence ''A'' cannot be true without ''B'' being true as well. For instance, the English sentence "Pat is a fluffy cat" entails the sentence "Pat is a cat" since one cannot be a fluffy cat without being a cat. On the other hand, this sentence does not entail "Pat chases mice" since it is possible (if unlikely) for a cat to not chase mice. Entailments arise from the semantics of linguistic expressions. Entailment contrasts with the pragmatic notion of implicature. While implicatures are fallible inferences, entailments are enforced by lexical meanings plus the laws of logic. Entailments also differ from presuppositions, whose truth is taken for granted. The classic example of a presupposition is the existence presupposition which arises from definite descriptions. For example, the sentence "The king of France is bald" presupposes that there is a king of France. Un ...
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Lauri Karttunen
Lauri Juhani Karttunen (September 29, 1941 – March 20, 2022) was an adjunct professor in linguistics at Stanford and an ACL Fellow. Career Karttunen received his Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1969 from Indiana University in Bloomington. At the University of Texas at Austin in the 1970s he worked mostly on semantics. He published a series of seminal papers on discourse referents, presupposition In linguistics and philosophy, a presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include: * ''Jane no longer writes ...s, implicative verbs, conventional implicatures, and questions. In the 1980s Karttunen became, along with Ronald M. Kaplan, Martin Kay, and Kimmo Koskenniemi, one of the pioneers in computational linguistics on the application of finite-state transducers to phonology and morphology. Karttunen and Kenneth R. Beesley published a textbook on ...
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Pragmatics
In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians. The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA). Pragmatics encompasses phenomena including implicature, speech acts, relevance theory, relevance and Conversation analysis, conversation,Mey, Jacob L. (1993) ''Pragmatics: An Introduction''. Oxford: Blackwell (2nd ed. 2001). as well as nonverbal communication. Theories of pragmatics go hand-in-hand with theories of semantics, which studies aspects of meaning, and syntax, which examines sentence structures, principles, and relationships. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called ''pragmatic competence''. In 1938 ...
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Common Ground (linguistics)
In semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, the common ground of a conversation is the set of propositions that the interlocutors have agreed to treat as true. For a proposition to be in the common ground, it must be common knowledge in the conversational context. The set of possible worlds compatible with the common ground is often called the ''context set''. The concept is fundamental to many theories of discourse. In such theories, the speech act of assertion is often analyzed as a proposal to add an additional proposition to the common ground. Similarly, presuppositions are taken to be licensed when they are already established in the common ground. While such approaches are typically construed as pragmatic, the framework of dynamic semantics treats the semantic denotation In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of a word or expression is its strictly literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of having high temperature. ...
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Implicit Assumption
A tacit assumption or implicit assumption is an assumption that underlies a logical argument, course of action, decision, or judgment that is not explicitly voiced nor necessarily understood by the decision maker or judge. These assumptions may be made based on personal life experiences, and are not consciously apparent in the decision making environment. These assumptions can be the source of apparent paradoxes, misunderstandings and resistance to change in human organizational behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of Individual, individuals, organisms, systems or Artificial intelligence, artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or or .... Tacit assumptions in science often include the elegance of natural laws, and the applicability of mathematics. See also * Assumption-based planning * Consensus reality * Hidden curriculum * Implicit attitude * Implicit cognition * Impl ...
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Philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ...
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Implicature
In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly saying everything we want to communicate. The philosopher H. P. Grice coined the term in 1975. Grice distinguished ''conversational'' implicatures, which arise because speakers are expected to respect general rules of conversation, and ''conventional'' ones, which are tied to certain words such as "but" or "therefore". Take for example the following exchange: : A (to passerby): I am out of gas. : B: There is a gas station 'round the corner. Here, B does not say, but ''conversationally implicates'', that the gas station is open, because otherwise his utterance would not be relevant in the context. Conversational implicatures are classically seen as contrasting with entailments: they are not necessary or logical consequences of what is said, ...
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Question
A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammar, grammatical forms, typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative in form but may not be considered wiktionary:bona fide, bona fide questions, as they are not expected to be answered. Questions come in a number of varieties. For instance; ''Polar questions'' are those such as the English language, English example "Is this a polar question?", which can be answered with yes and no, "yes" or "no". ''Alternative questions'' such as "Is this a polar question, or an alternative question?" present a list of possibilities to choose from. ''Open-ended question, Open questions'' such as "What kind of question is this?" allow many possible resolutions. Questions are widely studied in linguistics and philosophy of language. In the subfield of pragmatics, questions are regarded as illocutionary acts whi ...
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Popular Science
Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written by professional science journalists or by scientists themselves. It is presented in many forms, including books, film and television documentaries, magazine articles, and web pages. History Before the modern specialization and professionalization of science, there was often little distinction between "science" and "popular science", and works intended to share scientific knowledge with a general reader existed as far back as Greek and Roman antiquity. Without these popular works, much of the scientific knowledge of the era might have been lost. For example, none of the original works of the Greek astronomer Eudoxus (4th century BC) have survived, but his contributions were largely preserved due to the didactic poem '' Phenomena'' writte ...
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Language As A Window Into Human Nature
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning. Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between and . Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media usin ...
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Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses Outline of linguistics, many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal grammar, universal and Philosophy of language#Nature of language, fundamental nature of language and developing a general ...
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Interlocutor (linguistics)
In linguistics, discourse analysis, and related fields, an interlocutor is a person involved in a conversation or dialogue. Two or more people speaking to one another are each other's interlocutors. The terms ''conversation partner'', ''hearer'', or ''addressee'' are often used interchangeably with ''interlocutor''. According to Paul Grice, the behavior of interlocutors in ordinary conversation is governed by the cooperative principle. See also * Addressee honorific * Clusivity *Common ground (linguistics) * Conversation analysis *Discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. F ... References Linguistics Pragmatics {{pragmatics-stub ...
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