Publications
Publication details [#5416]
Keenan, Edward Louis and Robert D. Hull. 1973. The logical presuppositions of questions and answers. In Petöfi, Janos S. and Dorothea Franck, eds. Präsuppositionen in Philosophie und Linguistik. Athenäum Verlag. pp. 441–466.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Annotation
K. and H. propose a formal semantics for questions and answers which enables them to explain in what sense a question like 'Did it surprise the professors that every student passed?' carries a presupposition like 'Every student passed'. The question-answer relation is treated as a new sort of logical relation. It is shown that the presuppositions of questions are definable in terms of the presuppositions of the question-answer pairs, which are said to carry truth values so that the old definition of presupposition (in terms of truth values) obtains.