Flashcards on Reference, Deixis, Presupposition, and Entailment
Reference, Deixis, Presupposition, Entailment: Your Guide
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Entailment
7 cards
Card 1
Question: What is entailment in linguistics (one-sentence definition)?
Answer: Entailment is what logically follows from a sentence — what must be true if the sentence is true.
Card 2
Question: How does entailment behave under negation?
Answer: Entailment does NOT survive negation: if a sentence entails X, its negation does not entail X.
Card 3
Question: Give an example sentence that entails something and state the entailments.
Answer: "Rover chased three squirrels." entails that something chased three squirrels / Rover did something / three things were chased.
Card 4
Question: What is the key difference between presupposition and entailment regarding negation?
Answer: Presupposition survives negation (remains true under negation); entailment does not survive negation.
Card 5
Question: Explain foreground entailment.
Answer: Foreground entailment is what the speaker stresses as the main point, controlled by stress and emphasis (e.g. stressing the subject: "ROVER chased thr
Card 6
Question: Explain background entailment.
Answer: Background entailment are the logical consequences that follow automatically and can be inferred by the listener without being the speaker's main poin
Card 7
Question: Provide an example that illustrates that entailments are things that must be true if the original sentence is true.
Answer: From "Rover chased three squirrels," it must be true that three things were chased; this follows necessarily if the original sentence is true.