论文总字数：35467字

摘 要

预设是语言学领域的课题，在语义学和语用学领域都很热门。预设在语言使用中非常普遍，在人们的交流中总是存在着预设。预设触发语通常被认为和具体的词或者有语法特征的话语有关联,是预设的来源。这些词或结构可以让言语双方清楚语篇中存在的预设。国内对预设触发语的研究向着汉语实际出发，在汉语预设触发语的研究上取得了很大进步，尤其是述补结构和汉语特殊句型预设的探讨，但是仍缺乏对英汉预设触发语的对比研究。本文首先探讨了国内外对预设的研究的发展，接着从词汇和句法两个层面探讨了中英预设触发语的相同之处和不同之处，希望能减少跨文化交际过程中的阻碍，并为翻译和教学实践提供有益的启发。

关键词：英语预设触发语；汉语预设触发语；预设触发语的发展；对比研究

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Development of the Study of Presupposition Triggers 3

3.1 Study on English Presupposition Triggers 3

3.2 Study on Chinese Presupposition Triggers 6

4. The Similarities between English and Chinese Presupposition Triggers 9

4.1 The Similarities at Lexical Level 9

4.2 The Similarities at Syntactic Level 10

5. The Differences between English and Chinese Presupposition Triggers 12

5.1 Marking by Voice Stress 12

5.2 Comparison and Contrast 12

5.3 Non-Restrictive Relative Clauses 13

5.4 Culture-Loaded Presupposition Triggers 13

5.5 Change of State Predicates 14

5.6 Implicative Predicates 14

5.7 Some Specific Structures in Chinese 14

6. Implication 15

7. Conclusion 16

Works Cited 17

1. Introduction

Presupposition is common in our language use. It originated in the tradition of philosophy and then came into the field of linguistics. There always exists presupposition in people’s communication, which is the shared information of speakers or the background information of the conversation. Presupposition is not the sentence’s presupposition but the speaker’s presupposition.

Presupposition triggers, surface expressions of presupposition, are constructions or items through which we can make common-sense reasoning or backward reasoning to get the presupposition of the utterance.

Researches conducted in this field so far are mostly focused on English, and very few studies have been made in depth with respect to Chinese, especially comparative study on presupposition triggers in English and Chinese. The present thesis finds that while many presupposition carrying expressions are semantically and pragmatically the same in English and Chinese, some differences still exist resulting from different syntactic rules and cultural backgrounds. By distinguishing them, we can reason presupposition more precisely and adequately in both English and Chinese discourses, thus contributing to successful intra-cultural or inter-cultural communication and translation practice. It finds that lexical presupposition triggers, especially verbs, are used much more frequently than syntactic presupposition triggers. And the main differences between two languages lie in cultural and syntactic factors. Practically, this study can also facilitate language learning and improve understanding of implicit meaning.

This thesis talks about the definition of presupposition and then proceeds to discuss separately the evolution of the research on English presupposition triggers and Chinese presupposition triggers. Based on the discussion, a comparative analysis of English and Chinese presupposition triggers was made by drawing on some previous researches on presupposition triggers.

2. Literature Review

The definition of presupposition is very complex and elusive. Till now, there is no consensus on it. Saeed thought that to presuppose something means to assume it (Saeed, 2000: 197). In Yule’s opinion, a presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance (Yule, 2000:234). Cummings held the view that presupposition is one significant category of pragmatic phenomenon. In general it constitutes assumptions or inferences that are implicit in particular linguistic expressions (Cummings, 2005:204). A simple and informal definition for presupposition can be seen in Huang, where it is defined as “an inference or proposition whose truth is taken for granted in the utterance of a sentence” (Huang Yan, 2009:65). Presupposition mainly acts as a precondition for the appropriate use of the sentence. The negation of the sentence can not change this background assumption. In some respects, presupposition seems free of contextual effects; in other respects, though, presupposition seems sensitive to facts about the context of utterance (Saeed, 2000:93). Therefore, some linguists have divided presupposition into two types: semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition. The former is a logic and static research from the perspective of semantics and truth value. The latter analyzes presupposition in pragmatic approach and presupposition, to pragmatics, is a precondition sensitive to context and related to the beliefs, attitudes, and intention of the interlocutors.

Leech, in his Semantics, proposes a definition. If (a) X entails Y, (b) not-X indicates Y, X presupposes Y. (a) is a semantic condition and (b) is a pragmatic condition (Leech, 1981: 297). For example,

X: She has polished the table very nicely entails Y: she has polished the table.

NOT-X: She has not polished the table very nicely entails Y: She has polished the table (but not very nicely).

So, X presupposes Y.

Leech advocates that presupposition should be studied by semantics and pragmatics together because presupposition is influenced by context and is predictable (Leech, 1981: 300).

Levinson proposed two characteristics of pragmatic presupposition from the perspective of pragmatics (Levinson, 2001:301). They are appropriateness and mutual knowledge. Appropriateness means that presupposition of utterance should be in accordance with its context, which is the precondition of communication. Mutual knowledge refers to the common background shared by interlocutors. These two characteristics determine another characteristic of pragmatic presupposition, defeasibility. Like conversational implicatures, presuppositions are cancellable. They are annulled if they are in conflict with background information, conversational implicatures, certain discourse contexts, and further more certain intra-sentential contexts (Lei Kong, 1988:12). For example, “His wife is so beautiful, but what a pity that he divorced short before”. “His wife is so beautiful” presupposes “he got married”. But this presupposition is negated by the following sentence “but what a pity that he divorced short before.”

Presupposition triggers, source of presupposition, are generally associated with specific lexical items or grammatical utterance. They are constructions or items that mark the existence of presupposition in utterance, which is generally known by the speakers. Due to different definitions of presupposition, there are many versions of classification of presupposition triggers. The following is the evolution of the study of presupposition triggers.

3. Development of the Study of Presupposition Triggers

3.1 Study on English Presupposition Triggers

3.1.1 Initial Period

Since Chomsky added semantics into his grammar system, presupposition, as a kind of meaning, became a research subject. The initial study from the perspective of semantics includes Chomsky’s treating presupposition as the opposite of “focus”, Charles Fillmore’s semantic study on presupposition, and Paul Kiparsky and Carol Kiparsky’s study on factive predicate. They found that although “significant” and “likely” can be used in the same structure sometimes, they belong to two different categories and can not be used in the same structure most of the time. Take the following sentences for example. The word “likely” can only be used to replace “significant” in sentence (a).

(a) It is significant/likely that she has been found dead.

(b) The fact that it rained last night is significant.

3.1.2 Maturation Period

The researches on presupposition enlarged people’s view, more and more presupposition triggers are found. Levinson chose 13 kinds of them in his Pragmatics, which is simplified as follows. ((Levinson, 2001:23))

1. Definite description

These are the commonest and most obvious presupposition triggers, including singular demonstrative pronouns “this” and “that”; proper names like “London” or “Jack”; singular personal pronouns or impersonal pronouns “he”, “she”, “I”, “you”, and “it”; singular noun phrases like “the table”, “the president of America”, and “the child”. For example, the sentence that “Tom saw/did not see dog with three eyes” presupposes that “there exists a dog with three eyes”.

1. Factive verbs

Factive verbs are those verbs that can presuppose the truth of their objects. For example, the sentence that “Tom realized/did not realize that he lost his way” presupposes that “Tom lost his way”.

1. Implicative verbs

Verbs like “forget”, “manage”, “happen to”, “avoid” etc. are implicative verbs. For example, the sentence that “Tom forgot/did not forget to open the window” presupposes that “Tom ought to have opened, or intended to open the window”.

(4) Change of state verbs

Verbs, like “stop”, “continue”, “keep”, “arrive”, “begin” are change of state verbs in English. The sentence “Tom stopped/did not stop beating his son” presupposes “Tom had been beating his son”.

(5) Iteratives

Iteratives presuppose that the action or event in the sentence has happened twice or many times. English iteratives include “again”, “still”, “return”, etc. The sentence “the flying saucer came/did not come again” presupposes that the flying saucer came before.

(6) Verbs of judging

Verbs of judging are verbs conveying the attitude of speaker or writer. The sentence “Agatha accused/did not accuse Lan of plagiarism” presupposes that (Agatha thinks) plagiarism is bad.

(7) Temporal clauses

Clauses which are connected to a main sentence by time conjunction as adverbial of time are temporal clauses. Temporal clause constructors include “after”, “during”, “whenever”, etc.

The sentence “Before Strawson was even born, Frege noticed/did not notice presuppositions” presupposes that Strawson was born.

(8) Cleft sentences

A cleft sentence is a complex sentence that has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Cleft sentences usually focus on a particular constituent, which is often accompanied by a special intonation. The sentence “It was/was not Henry that kissed Rosie” presupposes that someone kissed Rosie.

(9) Implicit clefts with stressed constituents

Some other sentences with stressed constituents can perform the same function as cleft sentences. In the following examples, the word written in capital letters is the stressed constituent in (a). So (a) presupposes (b).

(a) Tom did/did not compete in the Olympics.

(b) Tom did compete somewhere.

(10) Comparisons and contrasts

The sentence “Carol is/is not a better linguist than Barbara” presupposes that Barbara is a linguist.

(11) Non-restrictive relative clauses

Non-restrictive relative clauses (also called non-identifying relative clauses or non-defining relative clauses) give additional information about subject. The sentence “The Proto-Harrappans, who flourished 2800-2650 B.C., were/were not great temple builders” presupposes that the Proto-Harrappans flourished 2800-2650 B.C.

(12) Counterfactual conditionals

Counterfactual conditionals presuppose that what the clause describes runs counter to the facts. For example, the sentence “If we got up five minutes earlier, we would catch the train” presupposes that we did not catch the train.

(13) Questions

Generally speaking, question generates the same presupposition as corresponding statement. What’s more, general question, yes-no question, and wh-question can trigger special presuppositions. And general question always presupposes meaningless information but it can still be a trigger. The sentence “Is there a panda in the zoo?” presupposes that either there is a panda in the room or there is not.

3.2 Study on Chinese Presupposition Triggers

Pragmatics emerged and flourished in China in 1980s. Most domestic scholars analyzed presupposition triggers from the perspective of syntax, semantics, and phonology. These three aspects are overlapped in actual use. Syntactic presupposition triggers are easy to identify. Semantic presupposition triggers are more complex, which can be identified by combining the components of the sentence. Phonologic presupposition triggers can be identified by the stress in the dynamic sentences in communication. Lan Chun’s An Exploration of the Presupposition Triggers in Modern Chinese is one of the earliest studies on Chinese presupposition triggers, classifying them into 9 categories corresponding to English presupposition triggers.

(1) Definite descriptions

These are the commonest and most obvious presupposition triggers, including singular demonstrative pronouns “这”, “那”; proper names “北京”, “上海”; singular personal pronouns or impersonal pronouns “他”, “她”, “它”; singular noun phrases like “桌子”, “电视”. For example, the sentence “北京是座美丽的城市” presupposes that “有这么一座城市叫北京”.

(2) Factive verbs

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