Semantic and Pragmatic Presupposition in Discourse Representation Theory

Abstract

This paper investigates semantic and pragmatic presupposition in Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) and enhances the pragmatic perspective of presupposition in DRT. In doing so, it draws attention to the need to account for agent presupposition (i.e. both speaker and hearer presupposition) when dealing with pragmatic presupposition. Furthermore, this paper links this pragmatic conception of presupposition with the semantic one (sentence presupposition) through using ‘information checks’ which agents are hypothesized to employ when making and receiving utterances.