蕴涵和预设判别的逻辑语义标准:困境与对策

Revisiting Logical and Semantic Criteria to Distinguish Entailment and Presupposition

本文在探讨蕴涵和预设概念的基础上,从逻辑语义的视角讨论了蕴涵和预设的区别和各种鉴别方法的长短之处,澄清了这几个问题:(1)蕴涵和预设各有自己的触发机制,很有必要辨别这些触发机制的特点;(2)无论从逻辑还是从语义上看蕴涵和预设都有重叠之处,因此割裂逻辑和语义来区分蕴涵与预设都会产生偏颇;(3)蕴涵和预设的关系复杂,但是掌握好它们的各种语义触发机制和逻辑关系,再辅以各种鉴别方法,还是能够把它们有效区分开来。基于此,本文不提倡把预设并入蕴涵,或者把蕴涵并入预设的做法。

This paper, based on the notion of entailment and presupposition, sheds light on the distinction between them and the merits and demerits of the methods distinguishing them. The following issues are made clear. First, entailment and presupposition all have their respective triggering devices and it is necessary to have an insight into how such devices work. Second, entailment and presupposition overlap each other both logically and semantically. Therefore the distinction of entailment and presupposition can be distorted from either logic or semantics. Finally, though in some cases one may get confused between entailment and presupposition, with the help of their triggering devices and logical relationship, one can distinguish entailment from presupposition. Therefore, we do not embrace such philosophy of integrating presupposition into entailment or oppositely, integrating entailment into presupposition.