Abstract
The notion of presupposition is perhaps the least established and least uniform notion of pragmatics that I look at in this investigation. The literature on presupposition is disparate, consisting mainly of articles that are either extremely programmatic1 or of a purely technical nature.2 However, in order to get a first approximation of what pragmatists characteristically mean by the term ‘presupposition’, consider the following exchange: A: Do you regret having bought that apartment? B: Do I regret what!? I haven’t bought an apartment. Here, A seems to have made a false assumption concerning B, namely, that B has bought an apartment. It seems that it is only against the background of this assumption that it makes sense for A to ask B whether he regrets his (assumed) transaction. And since the assumption is false, it does not make sense for B to answer affirmatively or negatively: he can only state that the assumption that A has obviously made is false.
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