Conversational Presuppositions. Presupposition as Defeasible (And Non-defeasible) Inference

Abstract

Is presupposition a semantic or genuinely pragmatic notion? My answer in this paper is that it is a pragmatic notion and I provide explanantions for this view, mainly related to cancellability. Of course, it is not easy to extract theoretical considerations from data and it is possible that one gives an opnionated interpretation of the data. However, at least I wish to propose that in the case of presuppositions data have to be seen in a different way and new data must also be consulted.