Textual Presupposition: An Intertextual Account

Whereas there has been ample research on presupposition, and different taxonomies have been put forward on the various types of presupposition, presupposition triggers, on the difference between entailment and presupposition, and on the dichotomy semantic presupposition/pragmatic presupposition, the interrelationship between presupposition and intertextuality has not received due attention. In some philosophical and linguistic accounts, the presupposition is preserved as a meaning-based notion and thereby accounted for in non -intertextual way where only propositions that are accepted and taken for granted by speaker/ writer count. The present study argues for an intertextual account of presupposition, where the proposition is not the property of the speaker/writer per se; rather, the presupposed proposition is interpreted in terms of intertextual relations with previous texts. The aim of the present article was to find; changed to, what kind of knowledge text producers expect their audience to have to be able to process new texts; what kind of knowledge text producers presuppose in the creation of new texts; the conceptual status of presupposition when new information is conveyed; and how presuppositions obtain in the case of intertextuality. This has been accomplished by drawing on both notions: Presupposition and intertextuality to argue whereas the two notions have been kept separate in non-intertextual accounts on presupposed propositions, both notions work on the same level of drawing on the text, and therefore to argue for coining a new term textual presupposition.