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Table 14.1
a. Sector of commonsense knowledgeb. Sector of experts' knowledge
generic termelement1. Chemical knowledge
colorgreenishelementary, categorynon metallic
smelldisagreeablefamilyhalogen
valenceunivalent polyvalent
chemical symbolCl
natural occurrencein chlorides
chlorineNaCl HCl
2. Physical knowledge
natural state of mattergas
other statesliquid chlorine
weight2 times as heavy, as air
atomic number17
atomic weight33.453 etc.
3. Biological knowledge
4. Geological knowledge
5. Historical information (discovery, further research, . . . )
6. Etymological information
7. Etc.

already called presuppositions can survive a negation test differently than other kinds of meaning postulates. First of all, as it has already been stressed, the global encyclopedic knowledge about a given lexical item (let us call it K) is only an ideal kind of competence. Actually, people share only reduced portions of K (let us call these portions kj, where j = 1, 2 . . . n). Any S can activate (or presume that his A can activate) a certain portion of his knowledge (kj) as far as given textual utterance is concerned. To understand a text is always a matter of a dialectics between the ideal K, the kj of A, and the supposed kj of S. More-

 
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