Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T00:36:54.816Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Burton-Roberts on presupposition and negation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Pieter A. M. Seuren
Pieter A. M. Seuren
Affiliation:
Nijmegen University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his paper ‘On Horn's dilemma: presupposition and negation’ Burton-Roberts (1989a) presents an ambitious programme, formulated right at the outset. He seeks to establish three points:

(i) Under the ‘standard logical definition of presupposition’ a pre-suppositional semantics is INCOMPATIBLE with a SEMANTICALLY AMBIGUOUS NEGATION operator (SAN), on pain of the theory being rendered ‘empirically empty and theoretically trivial’,.

(ii) From this it follows that the one unambiguous negation is presupposition preserving. Cases that have been identified as presupposition-cancelling negation should be re-analysed as ‘instances of a pragmatic phenomenon’, not unlike what has been proposed in Horn (1985), that is as METALINGUISTIC NEGATION (MN).

(iii) This pragmatic analysis of MN ‘itself implies a presuppositional semantics’, that is to say ‘a presuppositional theory of truth-value gaps’.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , September 1990 , pp. 425 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atlas, J. (1979). How linguistics matters to philosophy: presupposition, truth, and meaning. In Oh Ch.-K. & Dinneen D. A. (eds.), Presupposition ( = Syntax and Semantics 11). New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press, (p. ref. given by Burton-Roberts)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boër, S. & Lycan, W. (1976). The myth of semantic presupposition. Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Burton-Roberts, N. (1989a). On Horn's dilemma: presupposition and negation. JL 25. 95–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton-Roberts, N. (1989b). The limits to debate. A revised theory of presupposition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dummett, M. (1973). Frege: philosophy of language. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Gazdar, G. (1979). Pragmatics, implicature, presupposition, and logical form. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Horn, L. (1969). A presuppositional analysis of ‘only’ and ‘even’. Chicago Linguistic Society 5. 98–107.Google Scholar
Horn, L. (1985). Metalinguistic negation and pragmatic ambiguity. Lg 61. 121–174.Google Scholar
Kempson, R. M. (1975). Presuppositions and the delimitation of semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1970). A note on ambiguity and vagueness. LIn 1. 357–359.Google Scholar
Martin, J. N. (1982). Negation, ambiguity, and the identity test. Journal of Semantics 1. 251–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rommetveit, R. (1983). In search of a truly interdisciplinary semantics. Journal of Semantics 2. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seuren, P. A. M. (1984). Logic and truth-values in language. In Landman, F. & Veltman, F. (eds.), Varieties of formal semantics. Dordrecht: Foris. 343–363.Google Scholar
Seuren, P. A. M. (1985). Discourse semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Seuren, P. A. M. (1988). Presupposition and negation. Journal of Semantics 6. 176–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seuren, P. A. M. (to appear (a)). Presupposition. In von Stechow, A. & Wunderlich, D. (eds.), Handbuch der Semantik. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Seuren, P. A. M. (to appear (b)). Review of Burton Roberts (1989b). In Linguistics.Google Scholar
Van der Sandt, R. A. (to appear). Discourse systems and echo quotation.Google Scholar
Van Fraassen, B. (1971). Formal semantics and logic. New York & London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Weijters, A. (1985). Presuppositional propositional calculi. In Seuren (1985): Appendix. 483–525.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. (1975). Presuppositions and non-truth-conditional semantics. London, New York, San Francisco: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Zwicky, A. M. & Sadock, J. M. (1975). Ambiguity tests and how to fail them. In Kimball, J. P. (ed.), Syntax and Semantics Vol. 4. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press. 1–36.Google Scholar