Abstract

Presuppositions are items of information triggered by certain words and constructions that exhibit ‘projection behaviour’, which is to say that, except in special cases, they will escape from any level of embedding. Presupposed information is given, or at least presented as such, and there are two main theories of what it means for presuppositions to be given. On one account, a presupposition must be entailed in the local context in which it is triggered; on the other, presuppositions require that certain discourse entities be available in the context. On the latter account, but not on the former, anaphora is a special case of presupposition. It might be that both accounts are correct, though for different types of presupposition.