NMTS-Group3
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Presupposition (Group 3)
Overview
Members
Short description of the topic
There are endless ways of communicating. It takes place through language, the appearance of a person, animals communicate, music has the power to communicate and of course literature and even plants communicate. Usually we take a lot of knowledge for granted, such as Germany has a female Bundeskanzler or even historical events that have become part of our cultural memory and are therefore taken as common knowledge. Due to our topic communication via language in will be the aim of our group. We will deal with a part of semantics that is called formal semantics. This is a branch of linguistics that approaches meaning using the notion of truth. For presuppositions truth /falsity is important in terms of the relation between sentences. This means that the truth or falsity of the second sentence (the presupposed sentence) is implied by the truth or falsity of the first sentence
Examples
The truth of the second sentence is implied by the truth/falsity of the first sentence. If we know that the first sentence is not true, such as there isn‘t a king of France, bewilderment would be the reaction to such bold statement. A lot of times presuppositions are used where people are being manipulatet such as in commercials:
References and links
References
* Meyer, Paul Georg. 2002.Synchronic English Linguistics-An Introduction. Tübingen: Narr Studienbücher. * Bieswanger, Markus.2010. Introduction to English Linguistics. Stuttgart: UTB- Verlag.
Links
Our e-learning objects
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<mediaplayer>http://youtu.be/YQJvOaMCUaw</mediaplayer>
<mediaplayer>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb8c7pEEEYg</mediaplayer>
Our materials for an interactive whiteboard
Our pictures
Our exercises
1. Presupposition or entailment?
You will now have to find out whether the sentence is a presupposition or an entailment.
- Where is the man with the megaphone?.
- Queen of England attended a cooking workshop.
- My dog Richard was killed in a car accident.
2.The following sentences make certain presuppositions. What are they?
- 1. Would you mind washing up the dishes this time?
Presupposition:???
- 2. I want more milk for my tea!
Presupposition:??
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