Because You Just Told Me - Presupposition in Fiction

I’ve been listening to Lingthusiasm episodes over again and hit upon the presupposition episode. If you haven’t heard it yet, you should check it out (or read the transcript if you’re not a fan of podcasts).

What’s a presupposition

A presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world that is taken for granted in an utterance. Presupposition is an important concept in pragmatics, semantics, and philosophy (a lot of the work that has been done on presupposition has actually been done by philosophers as opposed to linguists). We presuppose many things all the time, because actually having to state every single thing in a sentence that exists would take a long time.

“The sheep are grazing.”

This sentence presupposes that there are things, sheep, and that they are capable of doing an action, such as grazing. This seems obvious, but if you change this…

“The matriniax are grazing.”

This presupposes we know what a matriniax is. Do you know? I don’t know either. In this case, we would have benefitted from a prior description of what a matriniax is. As it stands, we can’t really understand this sentence except for that there is a thing, a matriniax, that there are many of them, and they are capable of grazing. The nature of matriniax is unknown to us.

There are plenty of words and grammatical situations that trigger presupposition. Wikipedia has a pretty good list.

As an example of the philosophical interest of presupposition, think about what it means for a presupposition to be false. The most famous example is “The King of France is bald.” There is no person alive right now who can be called “the king of france.” Does that mean that this sentence is false? But if this sentence is false, then that means that “the kind of france is not bald” must be true, and that sentence cannot be true because there is no king of France. Some philosophers say that a negative presupposition results in a statement without a truth value - a statement that is neither true nor false.

Using Presuppositions for Effect

One thing McCulloch mentions is presupposition in the Lizzie Bennet diaries, where Lizzie’s sister pretends not to have watched an episode of Lizzie’s diary. Lizzie asks, “you just want to know about Darcy’s letter, don’t you?” Darcy’s letter was mentioned earlier. Lizzie’s sister says “No I don’t!” which outs her as having watched Lizzie’s diary - there’s no way she would know about Darcy’s letter otherwise. Outed by presupposition.

This is a pretty popular technique in fiction. TV Tropes has a page dedicated to the trope, although they do not mention how presupposition plays into it. Presupposition in media can be used for dramatic effect for one character to verify knowledge by presupposing it.

Some additional examples: in the musical Legally Blonde, Elle is part of the defense team of Brooke Wyndham, who has been accused of murdering her husband to run away with her poolboy. Elle suspects that her poolboy is lying about having been amorously involved with Elle because she thinks he’s gay. Her colleague Emmett decides to prod him by asking him, “And your first name again is?” with the poolboy responding appropriately, and then asking “and your boyfriend’s name?” and the poolboy replies “Carlos,” shocking everyone. Emmett presupposes that the poolboy had a boyfriend, and the poolboy absentmindedly confirms his presupposition instead of challenging it. This reveal leads Carlos to show up and declare that the poolboy is indeed gay, and has never been involved with any woman.

In an actual courtroom, presuppositions can be dangerous. Presuppositions can be used to create loaded questions, such as “when did you stop smoking?" which presupposes that smoking - of a legal or illegal sort - must have taken place. The defendant, if they have never smoked before, must make the clarification: "I have never smoked."

Villains can also make use of presupposition. One of my favorite examples is from Sonic Adventure 2. Tails and Sonic were offering a fake Chaos Emerald to Dr. Eggman, who was trying to collect all 7 for nefarious purposes. However, Dr. Eggman imprisons Sonic as he's approaching, and he states, “You didn’t think you could fool me with that fake chaos emerald, could you?” Tails, believing he’s been caught, asks “how did you know that was fake?” Sonic tries to get Tails to stop, but it’s too late. Dr. Eggman replies, “because you just told me, fox boy!” Here presupposition is used to confirm information that one is not certain about - as in Legally Blonde where the poolboy could have been gay or European, Dr. Eggman knows that there is a fake emerald, but he wanted to confirm it was fake, likely to rub it in their faces.

Note: volume increases a lot in the second half of the video.

What do you mean when you "beat" a game?

I always viewed the expression "to beat a game" as being equivalent to "to watch a movie" or "to read a book;" in other words, a simple expression of completion. But on further examination, it's really just an extension of the meaning "beat" in sentences like "I beat Johnny (at checkers)." Johnny is the challenger (and the one who was beaten) and checkers is the challenge. When you say "I beat the game," "the game" is the challenger and the challenge. Notice that "beat" has two internal arguments: there's what I'm going to be ad-hoc calling the <challenger> argument and then there's an optional <challenge> theta role. You can just say "I beat Johnny" - it's not required to express what it was you beat him at. You also can't express the <challenge> role by itself: "*I beat at checkers." As such, when you say "I beat the game," "the game" itself is occupying the <challenger> role. This is interesting; perhaps the fact that, in video games that are 1-player, you face up against an AI, contributes to viewing the game itself as a challenger.

But what about the <challenge> role? Notice that you can't really express it with video games: *I beat Super Mario 64 at the game. That's a borderline nonsensical sentence. It seems redundant, like saying *the town mayor of Mobile. Since you cannot overtly express the <challenge> role like that, I'm suggesting that "the game" is somehow also occupying the <challenge> role. It would make sense to consider the game itself the challenge, and that's probably the more intuitive view of what a game is as opposed to considering it a challenger.

Not all games can be beat, however. It's weird to say something like "I beat Tetris."* Assuming a player who was perfect at playing the game, you could play Tetris into infinity. There isn't what I'm calling a "natural end" to the game. Now, if you were playing a version of Tetris that had some sort of a 1P mode that had 10 levels and you finished that final level, you could say something like "I beat Tetris." But notice that we had to specify a special version of Tetris - Tetris, as we normally think of it, is not "beatable." A lot of arcade games like this. As an example, I love Galaga, and I once spent an entire card of Dave & Buster's points on getting the high score at Galaga. I played for so long that the game stopped introduced new levels and started repeating old levels.  Every time you got a game over, you could continue from where you left off if you put in more points. In this case, the only thing stopping you from playing was the amount of points you had. Given an infinite amount of credits, you could play Galaga forever - the game will simply continue repeating old levels. As such, you cannot beat a game like Galaga.

Compare this with Super Mario Bros. This game, no matter how good you are at it, must come to an end. Once you beat Bowser and rescue the princess, the game is over - it is in a "beaten" state. All it takes for a game to be "beatable" is for the game itself to end after you win. The winning is important - Tetris ends if you lose, but that doesn't count because "beating" requires that you win, that you complete whatever requirements the game is making of you. Causing the game to end because you fail the requirements it makes of you does not count as "beating" it anymore than losing at Super Mario Bros. counts as "beating" it.

You can't beat non-video games. "I beat Monopoly" isn't really acceptable either because the game itself can't be a challenger. You can beat someone at Monopoly, of course, but Monopoly itself can't be beaten (once again, exceptions made for a video game version of Monopoly that has some kind of a story mode with a concrete end). You can't beat "Red Light Green Light." Even in games where there is no other challenger, like Solitaire, it doesn't work: #I beat Solitaire. Playing with real cards or the Windows version makes no difference. And "I beat baseball," once again, is nonsensical.

You can win at all of these games. If you win at Monopoly, or Red Light Green Light, or Solitaire, it means that you are good at these games - you habitually win at them. "I won at Solitaire," you can say. "Winning," however, seems less restrictive than "beating." You can metaphorically extend the meaning to non-game things like "to win at cooking," despite cooking not being a game and not having rules that determine winners and losers.

You can certainly win at video games, but the context in which it is used is not the same as "beating." If you won at Super Smash Bros., it means you won some particular battle, either against an AI or another player, but it does not - and cannot - mean you beat the game. You can't "win at" a particular mode, either, although you can "beat" a mode. For example, Bayonetta has a difficulty level called 'Infinite Climax'. you can beat Infinite Climax, but if you "win at Infinite Climax," it can only mean that you're good at playing on that difficulty level, not that you finished the game on that difficulty level.

The talk of difficulty levels also notes something interesting about "beat." You can say you "beat hard mode," but you can also say you "beat the game on hard mode." You can extend this even further by having separate challengers and challenges: "I beat Anna at Ultra Game on hard mode." Is this "on X" an adjunct or an argument? It seems to me that in "I beat Anna at Smash on Hyrule Temple," on Hyrule Temple is an adjunct expressing (virtual) location. Can on hard mode be considered an adjunct expressing manner? I'm not entirely sure, and the difference between arguments and adjuncts can be pretty hard to tell sometimes.

Another neat thing: boss battles (and enemies in general) are treated the same as games. It's "I beat Zangief," not "I beat Zangief at a battle." AI opponents are also both the challenger and the challenge (compare "I beat Johnny at Street Fighter").

EDIT: March 5, 2025: Found a Reddit thread on variations of 'beat.'