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Page 251
On the contrary, if S uttered (26), the contradictory representation of the relation background-foreground would be
23167-0251a.GIFNaturally, this solution does not consider cases (which are rather frequent in natural language as well as in human psychology) in which S does not believe p and nevertheless takes it for granted in order to salvage the conversational intercourse. But in such cases S is rhetorically or pragmatically lying. He is performing complicated strategies and comedies of errors, and he can do this exactly because there is a minimal agreement on standard conditions of use of certain p-terms.
2.4. Positional Power of P-Terms
We said before that the use of certain terms "makes A understand" something. This power to induce beliefs is what we call positional power of presuppositional sentences. The use of p-terms obliges A to accept certain contents and, in so doing, imposes a certain perspective on the discourse which A cannot challenge. This perspective is precisely what we defined as background frame.
It is not necessary that the presupposition be already known to A; when a p-term is introduced into discourse, the presupposition carried by the p-term is settled in an incontestable way. Presupposed information becomes, in this way, part of the context that A must take into consideration.
For example, in a dialogue such as (29),
(29) S: I stopped smoking.
A: I didn't know that you smoked.
Speaker A must assume the presuppositions carried by S's sentence as clements of discursive context, even if he did not know anything before about the smoking habits of S.
The semantic encyclopedic description accounts for presuppositions in terms of"instructions" for the co-textual insertion of a certain lexical item. When the lexical item is inserted in a given context, presupposi-

 
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