Presupposition, negation and trivalence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10141541 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pieter A M Seuren, Pieter Seuren (0000-0002-5976-4115, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 261-297 |
| Publication date | 2000-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-2267 • E-ISSN: 1469-7742 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s002222670000815x |
| OpenAlex | W2132629903 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 7 |
Close inspection of presupposition(= P-)cancelling and other metalinguistic negation data shows that natural language semantics must be (at least) trivalent, with the values ‘true’, ‘minimally false’ (assertion failure) and ‘radically false’ (presupposition failure). It is argued that presupposition is a semantic phenomenon originating in a distinction between two kinds of satisfaction conditions for predicates, the PRECONDITIONS generating presuppositions, and the UPDATE CONDITIONS generating classical entailments. The trivalence of language is a natural consequence of the acceptance of occasion sentences in an incremental Discourse Semantics. The logical properties of sentences are considered secondary and derived from their semantic properties. These include, besides propositional content, a speech act quality, specifying the personal commitment taken on by the speaker not only in respect of the propositional content, but also with regard to the linguistic forms selected. It is suggested that the classical truth-functional operators should be redefined as instructions under speech act commitment. The negation operator is singled out: it is redefined as an instruction to reject either an incrementable sentence, which may be a comment about a form used or to be used (P-preserving negation), or an already incremented sentence to be removed from the discourse along with some presupposition (P-cancelling negation)
Assertion · Linguistics · Natural (archaeology · Negation · Pragmatics · Presupposition · Programming language · Semantics (computer science · Sentence · Computer Science · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
Redefining logical constants as inference markers
Understanding the descriptive/metalinguistic dichotomy
Questions, Presuppositions and Fallacies
The rhetoric of negation in research articles
Exploring the Interpersonal Functions of Negation in Science Writing Across 35 Years
“Establish a niche” via negation
Exploring a 'Pragmatic Ambiguity' of Negation
The relationship between generative grammar and (relevance-theoretic) pragmatics
Persuasive presuppositions
Background relevance
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,38 |
| Citation span | 2000 - 2026 (27) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |