How much do you like it?
Adjectives and adverbs answer the questions like: How? When? Which? What kind of?
The presuppositions based on adjectives and adverbs are trying to draw our conscious attention to this question while the rest of the sentence is assumed to be true.
For example the headline: How much do you like it? cause that we focus on looking for the answer on the question ‘how much’ and we unconsciously agree with the fact that we like it.
· When will you go out for a coffee with me? (the assumption –you will go for a coffee with me, the question is when)
· How quickly will I get my money back? (the assumption – I will get my money back, we don’t even ask when we will get them but we make an additional assumption that it will happen soon)
· Where can we meet? (the assumption – we can meet, the question is where)
· What colour of this car version suits you most? (the assumption – all colours suit you but one is your favourite, it doesn’t matter for the sales manager what colour it is)
· How big discount will I obtain in your company (the assumption – I’m sure that I will get the discount and I want it to be big)
Pay attention to the assumptions in the above sentences. The sentence makes sense only if the assumptions are considered true at the unconscious level.
Such question automatically draws your attention to the issue we want to emphasise.
The defence against such a question is highly difficult especially if it was posed rapidly and during the longer statement.
Such a single presupposition is easy to ‘unpack’ but for the time being concentrate on the training these models. Then you will learn what to do to properly mask it.
You will also learn how to answer such questions once you perceive it and decipher.