On presupposition and speaker‐beliefs

Empirical investigation of the theoretical distinction between “plugs”; and “holes”

Bibliographic Data

ID20309840
AuthorsPatricia L Carrell (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), Gabriela Richter (Southern Illinois University Carbondale)
Year1981
Volume14
Issue1
Pages47-67
Publication date1981-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePaper in Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-1251 • E-ISSN: 2224-3380
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08351818109370524
OpenAlexW2006051062
LanguageEN
References cited11

This paper reports the findings of a study designed to test Karttunen's (1973) theoretical linguistic distinction between “plugs”; and “holes.”; A basic assumption was that if this distinction is psychologically real for members of the English speech community, it ought to be empirically verifiable. The investigators were also interested in the question of how non‐native speakers of English, as compared with native speakers, behave with respect to the plug‐hole distinction. Two groups of subjects were tested—adult native speakers of English and adults acquiring English as a second language. Subjects were presented with a questionnaire which consisted of three sentences containing holes. The subjects’ task was to judge for each sentence what the speaker of the sentence necessarily had to believe with respect to the presupposed information contained in the sentence. Results indicate that, for both groups of subjects, the theoretical distinction between plugs and holes was not real; both groups treated all the verbs as if they belonged to the category of holes

American English · Linguistics · Presupposition · Sentence · Task (project management) · Test (biology) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology

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