Presuppositions: Implications of the speaker

I wasn't sure how to define in my own words the term presupposition, so I googled it, and this is what I found: " Presuppositions are implications that are often felt to be in the background — to be assumed by the speaker to be already known to the addressee." I found this definition on this website https://www.msu.edu/course/lin/437/entpresu.htm.

But my understanding of presupposition is basically, that presuppositions pretty much, in layman term, would be pretty much the equivalent of "read between the lines". When the speaker says something, no matter how ambiguous it may be, whether it is true or not, by simply uttering such a sentence, they assume that the listener will be able to figure out the inferred meaning behind it. 

To better explain my understanding of presuppositions, I'll use this sentence as an example: "I am a fast swimmer"... by saying this, what would the listener/reader, ASSUME about me? 

Reference and Inference

      All of us want to communicate effectively. Without saying a lot but the listeners will be able to understand our intentions. However, it is not easy. When the speaker uses reference but the listener is unable to understand, it is better for the speaker to give up using the reference. On the other hand, if the listener is able to understand the reference that the speaker uses, we can infer that both of them come from the same community. It is pragmatics connection which is mentioned in the book at page 20. It shows the listener is a member of the same community as the speaker.

    In Chinese slang, people use water to represent money. After you look at your wallet, you tell your friend "I have no 'water', can you lend me some?" Chinese people usually know what do you mean and they will lend you money instead of giving you a bottle of Poland Spring water.

    In our daily conversation, we always use referring expression because we assume the listener knows what or who we are referring to. For example, two girls were looking for Dennis.

Mary: Sandy, do you know where is Dennis?

Sandy: He is in class.

Mary: Do you know when he will finish classes?

Sandy: At 4:00

        So, in this situation, after "Dennis" was mentioned by Mary, "Dennis" is no longer repeated. After that, a pronoun "he" is used instead because both of Sandy and Mary know that each other understand who they are talking about unless there is another they will mention. Here, “he” is an anaphoric reference.    

        In this example, it wouldn’t be an attributive use which means whoever fits the description since they were focusing on a specific “Dennis”. That means it is a referential use.

    Sometimes people mention the pronoun before they mention the noun. In this situation, it is called cataphora.

         Going back to the example, in the last dialog, Sandy did not even mention the pronoun. Why? According Yule on page 23, the speaker, who is Sandy, assumed that the listener, who is Mary, will be able to infer who she is talking about. Here, Sandy used zero anaphora.

         As Yule pointed out at page 24 of the book, if a reference is successfully recognized, indicating a kind of sharing knowledge social connection between the listener and the speaker.

Deixis: Proximity towards speaker.

As we learned in class, deixis are words that the speaker uses to make references to the proximity of events, people or places. In my opinion, deixis allow people to better clarify their ideas by allowing the speaker to demonstrate with words a more general picture of what they are trying to convey. They do this by using words of reference that allow the listener to estimate the proximity of the event, object, or place being mentioned. There are three different types of deixis: People, time, and space. The distance towards the speaker can be estimated by how close or far something is taking place from the speaker. The deitic center directly involves the speaker; proximal are events that are very close to the speaker; and distal are events that the speaker must refer to from a distance.

People deixis are personal pronouns; they can give the listener an idea as to the closeness or proximity of the people the speaker is referring to or interacting with.

Time deixis refer to when an event is taking place, whether it's in the present, the near past, the distant past, the near future, or the distant future.

Space deixis refers to objects' distance away from the speaker.

Inferred Meaning: Why We Say the Things We Say

Everyday people communicate. We utter requests, commands, questions, etcetera. The way we do so (the wording of these requests, commands, questions, etcera) shapes the way the listener infers the utterance. That inference shapes their response. In class today, we learned that people speak using indirect speech acts and direct speech acts. It is most common that we say things indirectly to soften or even disguise our intent to the listener, though usually the listener (assuming they understand our cultural and social linguistic mannerisms) can easily understand our exact meaning. We do this to maintain the relationship with the listener, whichever type of relationship that may be, and abide by the rules of communication.