Pragmatics

Assertion is generally thought of being open, explicit and direct, as opposed for instance to implying something without explicitly saying it. In this respect, assertion is contrasted withpresupposition and implicature. The contrast is, however, not altogether sharp, partly because of the idea of indirect speech acts, including indirect assertions.

2.1 Presupposition

A sentence such as

(3)Kepler died in misery.

is not true unless the singular term ‘Kepler’ has reference. Still, Frege argued that a speaker asserting that Kepler died in misery, by means of (3) does not also assert that ‘Kepler’ has reference (Frege 1892: 574). That Kepler had reference is not part of the sense of the sentence. Frege's reason was that if it had been, the sense of its negation

(4)Kepler did not die in misery.

would have been that Kepler did not die in misery or ‘Kepler’ does not have reference, which is absurd. According to Frege, that ‘Kepler’ has reference is rather presupposed, both in an assertion of (3) and in an assertion of its negation.
The modern treatment of presupposition has followed Frege in treating survival under negation as the most important test for presupposition. That is, if it is implied that [ltr]p[/ltr], both in an assertion of a sentence [ltr]s[/ltr] and in an assertion of the negation of [ltr]s[/ltr], then it is presupposed that [ltr]p[/ltr] in those assertions (unless that [ltr]p[/ltr] is entailed by all sentences). Other typical examples of presupposition (Levinson 1983: 178–81) include

(5)John managed [didn't manage] to stop in time.

implying that John tried to stop in time, and

(6)Martha regrets [doesn't regret] drinking John’s home brew.

implying that Martha drank John's home brew.
In the case of (3), the presupposition is clearly of a semantic nature, since the sentence ‘Someone is identical with Kepler’, which is true just if ‘Kepler’ has reference, is a logical consequence both of (3) and of (4). By contrast, in the negated forms of (5) and (6), the presupposition can be cancelled by context (e.g., as in (7))

(7)John didn't manage to stop in time. He didn't even try.

This indicates that in this case the presupposition is rather a pragmatic phenomenon; it is the speaker or speech act rather than the sentence or the proposition expressed that presupposes something. However, the issue of separating semantic from pragmatic aspects of presupposition is complex, and regarded differently in different approaches to presupposition (for an overview, see Simons 2006).[3]
In either case, presupposing should be kept distinct from asserting. One further reason is that the presupposition occurs in other illocutionary types as well. For instance, in asking

(8)Did John [didn't John] manage to stop in time?

the speaker normally assumes that John tried and is only asking about the success. Still, it is not easy to distinguish assertion from presupposition in pure speech act terms. Typically, the distinction is based either on the meaning properties of the sentence used, or on properties of the conversational setting, that is on what is taken for granted (cf. section 5, regarding Stalnaker's account).
For instance, by

(9)We regret that the pool will be closed today.

a concierge may inform a group checking in to a hotel about the state of the pool.[4] Formally, in (9) it is presupposed rather than asserted that the pool will be closed, but the information is conveyed equally well by means of the presupposition as by means of a more direct assertion with

(10)The pool will be closed today.

given that the guests did not already know that the pool would be closed, and given that the guests were able to compute the presupposition (both taken for granted by the concierge). By contrast, assuming that the concierge believes that a guest does know that the pool will be closed, (9) will not be used to convey information about the pool, only about the attitude of the staff, while a sincere utterance of (10) is an assertion that the pool will be closed, whatever is assumed about the hearer's prior knowledge. The contrast between (9) and (10) highlights a common intuition about a central feature of assertion: explicitness. On this intuition, only the content that is explicitly expressed is asserted, while further contents may be indirectly conveyed, relying on background knowledge and reasoning. This idea is controversial, however, and the opposite intuition is that indirect ways of conveying information can be assertoric in their own right. More on this theme below.

2.2 Implicature

Frege noted (1879: 20) that there is no difference in truth conditional content between sentences such as

(11)a.John works with real estate and likes fishing.
b.John works with real estate but likes fishing.

‘And’ and ‘but’ contribute the same way to truth and falsity. However, when using (11b), but not when using (11a), the speaker indicates that there is a contrast of some kind between working with real estate and liking fishing. The speaker is not asserting that there is a contrast. For instance, forming a conditional with (11b) in the antecedent preserves the contrast rather than make it hypothetical:

(12)If John works with real estate but likes fishing, I think we can bring him along.

It is usually said that the speaker in cases like (11b) and (12) implicates that there is a contrast. These are examples of implicature. H. Paul Grice (1975, 1989) developed a general theory of implicature. Grice called implicatures of the kind exemplified conventional, since it is a standing feature of the word ‘but’ to give rise to them.
Most of Grice's theory is concerned with the complementing kind, the conversationalimplicatures. These rely on general conversational maxims, not on features of expressions. These maxims are thought to be in force in ordinary conversation. For instance, the maxim Be orderly! requires of the speaker to recount events in the order they took place. This is meant to account for the intuitive difference in content between

(13)a.John took off his shoes and sat down.
b.John sat down and took off his shoes.

According to Grice's account, the speaker doesn't assert, only implicates that the events took place in the order recounted. What is asserted is just that both events did take place.
Real or apparent violations of the maxims generate implicatures, on the assumption that the participants obey the over-arching Cooperative Principle. For instance, in the conversation

(14)A:Where does John spend the summer?
B:Somewhere in Canada.

B implicates that he doesn't know where in Canada John spends the summer. The reasoning is as follows: B violates the Maxim of Quantity to be as informative as required. Since B is assumed to be cooperative, we can infer that he cannot satisfy the Maxim of Quantity without violating some other maxim. The best candidate is the sub-maxim of the Maxim of Quality that requires you not to say anything for which you lack sufficient evidence. Hence, one can infer that B doesn't know. Again, B has not asserted that he doesn't know, but still managed to convey it in an indirect manner.
The picture is more complex because of a distinction Grice made within the domain of conversational implicatures, between particularized and generalized implicatures (Grice 1975: 37–8). Generalized implicatures do not depend on contextual features, but are default inferences associated with ways of including or not including explicit information. One of Grice's own examples is

(15)X is meeting a woman this evening. (Grice 1975: 37)

carrying the generalized implicature that the woman is not “X's wife, mother, sister or perhaps even close platonic friend”.[5]

Pragmatics

2.1 Presupposition

2.2 Implicature

Pragmatics :: تعاليق

Pragmatics