19: Sentences with baggage - Presuppositions

Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

Science

4.8 • 791 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2018

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What’s so weird if I say, “the present King of France is bald” or “I need to pick up my pet unicorn from the vet”? It seems like those sentences should be false: at least, they certainly can’t be true. But if you reply, “No, he isn’t” or “No, you don’t” it still feels unsatisfying: aren’t we still both assuming that France has a king and that I have a pet unicorn? In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch explore different kinds of meanings: sometimes sentences wear their meaning on their sleeves, but sometimes they instead smuggle it in as baggage. These assumptions are known as presuppositions. Presuppositions are incredibly useful (we couldn’t manage conversations at a normal pace without them), but in the wrong hands (such as when you’re trying to influence an eyewitness) they can also be very dangerous. This month’s bonus episode on Patreon is about memes, poetry, and mock-old English: Roses are red / Violets are dreams / In this episode / We talk poems and memes. To listen to bonus episodes and support the show, visit patreon.com/lingthusiasm We also announced a new round of Lingthusiasm merch: you can now get scarves with a subtle tree diagram print suitable for all your language family tree/syntax tree and other structural needs, and t-shirts, mugs, totes, and pouches with Heck Yeah Descriptivism or Heck Yeah Language Change on them, as well as the existing IPA scarves and NOT JUDGING YOUR GRAMMAR, JUST ANALYSING IT items in more colours! Go to lingthusiasm.com/merch to see pictures and order. To see this episode's shownotes, go to https://lingthusiasm.com/post/173106183816/lingthusiasm-episode-19-sentences-with-baggage

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to L'Enthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm Lauren Gorn.
0:22.1	And I'm Gretchen McCulloch. And today we're talking about when sentences come with baggage.
0:26.9	But first, we have new merchandise for you.
0:30.2	Woo, new match.
0:31.3	By very popular demand, we have scarves that have tree structure diagrams on them.
0:38.7	They're very subtle. There are no words. There are no labels, so they can belong to whatever theoretical framework you're interested
0:43.2	in, whether that syntax trees, language family trees, syllable structure trees. They look
0:49.2	really cool. We're really excited to see them around your necks. We have them in grey, cream, light pink, teal, and red.
0:58.0	And we've also taken the opportunity to add a few more colours that were requested to the
1:03.4	IPA scarf line up as well.
1:05.2	So if you were thinking of getting an IPA scarf or one of our new tree scarves, we have
1:10.5	some new colours. We also
1:11.6	have new colors for some of the not judging your grammar, just analyzing it, zip bags, and
1:18.9	notebooks. And we also have a bunch of new items that say, heck yeah, descriptivism or heck yeah,
1:25.6	language change because we couldn't pick. So if you want to be
1:28.5	extra excited about linguistic descriptivism or language change, you can now do that. And if you want a
1:34.6	black or a gray IPA scarf with all your favorite characters from the International Phonetic Alphabet
1:39.7	on them, you can get those too. And as always, if some of those colors don't take your fancy,
1:44.9	all of our patrons can order custom color merch in whatever colors they like. Just go to linkthusiasm.com
1:51.1	slash merch. I am really excited about this topic because this gets to take me back five years to when I was obsessed with watching a YouTube series called The Lizzie Bennett Diaries.
2:12.6	And I watched it entirely on your recommendation.
2:15.6	And it was good, right?
	...

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