Publications

Publication details [#5475]

Kempson, Ruth M. 1974. Presupposition: A problem for linguistic theory. Transactions of the Philological Society 1973 : 29–54.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English

Annotation

K. argues that the notion of presupposition is not very explanatory, and is full of problems. She correlates the problem with two opposing meaning-theories, viz. the truth-value theory and the use-theory, and argues that the notion cannot be accounted for in terms of speaker beliefs, thus claiming that a truth-based semantics is the appropiate one. Then she discusses the problem of presupposition in a truth-value semantics, and argues for a distinction between a theory of semantics and a theory of pragmatics, assigning presupposition and other speech act concepts to the latter.