论文总字数：32859字

摘 要

第一位探讨预设问题的是德国哲学家和数学家弗雷格。自20世纪60年代以来，预设成为语用学中一个热门的话题。预设分为语义预设和语用预设。语义预设依附于语言的表层结构，主要研究真值条件，而语用预设就是结合人类话语交际过程来对预设进行的研究。在这种言语互动中，预设则是互动的粘合剂。依靠它，双方的话语才得以互相理解，交际才得以顺利延续。因此，研究预设在言语交际中的特征和功能是非常重要的课题。本文旨在研究语用预设在日常会话中的作用，进一步提高人们运用语言的能力，提高话语的正确性和有效性。利用预设或进行预设分析具有以下交际价值——达到交际目标，实现隐藏意图，保证跨文化交际顺利进行，创造幽默及讽刺的效果。

关键词：语用预设；功能；交际价值

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Presupposition studies in the West 2

2.2 Presupposition studies in China 2

3. Presupposition and Pragmatic Presupposition 3

3.1 Classification of presupposition 3

3.2 The characteristics of pragmatic presupposition 5

4. Pragmatic Presupposition in Verbal Communication and Its Communicative Values 7

4.1 Pragmatic presupposition in verbal communication 8

4.2 Functions of pragmatic presupposition 8

4.3 Communicative values of pragmatic presupposition 11

5. Conclusion 15

Works Cited 16

1. Introduction

Pragmatic presupposition has close relation to utterance context, the situation of the addresser and the addressee. Viewing from this pragmatic perspective, this thesis makes an analysis on the pragmatic presupposition in verbal communication, mainly comprised of its characteristics, functions and communicative values. The analysis of the pragmatic presupposition in verbal communication can help the addresser produce proper and efficient utterances and provide the addressee with a better understanding of the meanings of utterances, and the analysis of its functions will promote the smoothness of the communication. In addition, the communicative values of pragmatic presupposition can be beneficial for people to form special communicative strategies so that they can easily achieve their intended purposes.

It is significant to study pragmatic presupposition because pragmatic presupposition is the prerequisite for the appropriateness and smoothness of the utterances. It is proved that the pragmatic presupposition is a crucial factor for a successful communication. In verbal communication, people usually deliberately make use of the pragmatic presupposition to reach their communicative goals. The study on pragmatic presupposition in the communication in this thesis is beneficial for the addresser to effectively produce utterances and the addressee to better understand utterances, thus improving the quality of language and enhancing communicative results.

2. Literature Review

The proposition of presupposition and its development shows that presupposition is a complicated language phenomenon, upon which linguists have different points of view from the very beginning. Now it still is a hot issue among linguists. In this part, it summarizes the studies both abroad and home.

2.1 Presupposition studies in the West

In 1982, Frege, a German mathematician and philosopher, was the first one who mentioned presupposition in his book On Sense and Reference. By presupposition, he refers to: If anything is asserted there is always an obvious presupposition that the simple or compound names used to have a reference. In other words, any proposition has an obvious presupposition. In the proposition “John’s wife died” presupposes that John has a wife. In its negative form “John’s wife didn’t die”, the presupposition is still true. If the proper has no reference, then the sentence can not be said true or false, thus appearing truth-value gap.

However, the British mathematician and philosopher Russell holds the opposite opinion. In1905, he proposed the famous theory “definite description” in his book On Denoting. He believes that if one of the propositions in conjunction of propositions is false then the whole utterance is false. For example, (a) The present King of France is bald. (b) There exists a present King of France. The proposition (a) is false because (b) is false. There is no king in France today and France is a republic now.

Russell’s idea was challenged by the British linguist Strawson whose view on presupposition resembles that of Frege. From his point of view, the sentence does not have the problem of being true or false, and only the statement does. For instance, such statement “The King of France is smart” may be true in 1670 and may be false in 1770; while in 1970 there is no problem of being true or false because there is no king in France.

Strawson’s notion of the presupposition led to the emergence of semantic presupposition. From 1970s, linguists started to study presupposition from pragmatic perspective, that is to say, pragmatic presupposition.

2.2 Presupposition studies in China

On the basis of the presupposition theories established by foreign linguists, many Chinese scholars have put forward their own views and have done much work in this field. Chen Xinren, together with He Ziran, authored the book Contemporary Pragmatics. Liu Songhao tries to deal with reading comprehension by means of presupposition. What’s more, Huang Huaxin wrote an article On the Characteristics and Classification of Presupposition and divided presupposition into overt presupposition, factual presupposition and so forth. Later, Shu Dingfang talked about this topic from its origin, definition, and classification and so on. Last but not least, He Zhaoxiong, Jiang Wangqi, Li Xiyin and Xu Shenghuang have also made great contributions to this field.

The progress on presupposition made in China is inspiring. What’s worth mentioning is its departure from the restriction of semantics. Instead, Chinese scholars try to relate presupposition to other subjects, which is a huge success.

However, few linguists have studied presupposition in real communication, so the roles of presupposition in context and its functions in real conversations still need studying. This paper aims to study presupposition in communication, its functions and its communicative values, thus contributing to successful communication.

3. Presupposition and Pragmatic Presupposition

3.1 Classification of presupposition

Basically there are two basic types of presupposition: semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition. In brief, the former analyzes presupposition in the light of logical semantics; the latter studies presupposition from the aspect of pragmatics.

3.1.1 Semantic presupposition

Semantic presupposition is mainly concerned with the relationship between statements or sentences. The semantic presupposition requires sentences to be classified in terms of a three-valued logic (true, false, neither true nor false). That is to say, a proposition Q is the semantic presupposition of another proposition P if whenever

(a) P is true, Q is true

(b) the negation of P,-P , is true, Q is also true

Let’s look at this example. In (1), both a and a’ presupposes b. That is to say, whether my bike needs repairing or not, I have a bike, so b is the presupposition of a and a’.

(1) (a) My bike needs repairing.

(a’) My bike does not need repairing.(a’= the negation of a)

(b) I have a bike.

3.1.2 Pragmatic presupposition

Pragmatic presupposition studies the relationship between human beings and the propositions they made. Therefore, pragmatic presupposition is not concerned with presupposition on sentence or statement level but on communicational level of the addresser and the addressee. In other words, pragmatic presupposition in fact researches the relationship between communicators and their language using.

For example,

(2) Please shut the door.

From (2), we can make the following presuppositions: the door is mutually known to the addresser and addressee; the door is open; the addressee has the ability to close the door. In this sense, pragmatic presupposition should be studied with respect to addresser, addressee, assumption, and context and so on.

3.1.3 The relationship between presupposition and pragmatic presupposition

Just as mentioned above, the concept of presupposition is first studied on the basis of truth-value from semantic perspective while the pragmatic approach considers presuppositions as a pragmatic phenomenon. In a sense, semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition are treated compatible, but not treated as two distinctive presuppositions. To put it in another way, we can not study presupposition alone because semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition are related closely.

3.2 The characteristics of pragmatic presupposition

According to He Ziran and Chen Xinren, pragmatic presupposition has the following characters.

3.2.1 Appropriateness

Pragmatic presupposition is treated as felicity conditions that the addresser needs to perform some speech act, that is, in the verbal communication process, the context in which the addresser utters a sentence should be appropriate or felicitous. Thus the felicity conditions vary according to context. In order to make presupposition understood, certain basic context conditions should be met, such as the identity of individual participants, sex, age, the objective background and so on. Only if a sentence is uttered with a felicitous presupposition, the sentence is appropriate. Let’s look at the example,

(3) Mr. Li, can I get your luggage?

Whether this speech act is appropriate or not relies on a series of pragmatic presuppositions in the context. The addresser decides language use by judging the status of the addressee. The addressee must be a middle-aged man; the relationship between them is not so intimate; the addresser should be polite to the addressee. These factors should be considered as felicitous conditions in pragmatic presuppositions. If the utterance does not fit the actual context, the speech act would not be felicitous.

Example (4):

A Chinese teacher praised an overseas student for his kind behavior of donating blood. He uttered such a sentence: “How nice you are! You are a living Lei Feng.” This overseas student felt confused: “Who’s Lei Feng?”

From the above example, we can make such implication that the Chinese teacher thinks the overseas student knows who Lei Feng is, but it turns out that the student knows nothing about Lei Feng. Therefore, this compliment is not appropriate here.

3.2.2 Common ground

Pragmatic presupposition is defined as the background knowledge mutually shared by both the addresser and addressee. Whether the addressee can successfully interpret the meaning conveyed by the addresser is closely related to the common ground of pragmatic presupposition. It is the prerequisite condition of the successful communicating and efficient understanding of utterance meaning. For instance,

(5) A: It is raining.

B: The crop will grow well!

From the above communication, we can infer the common ground is that it hasn’t rained for a long time. The information is closely related to the context and is known by the addresser and the addressee. If pragmatic presupposition is not commonly known, the communication between A and B won’t be successful.

Another example,

(6) A: What about inviting John to the party?

B: Good idea! He can give Lisa a lift.

Here the pragmatic presupposition include: 1) both the addresser and the addressee know who John and Lisa are; 2) John has vehicle for transportation; 3) it probably be a car; 4) Lisa has no vehicle for transportation at present. The above information must be mutually known or shared by both sides, which enable them to conduct successful communication. Without these pragmatic presuppositions, the communication between A and B would not be possible.

3.2.3 Subjectiveness

Pragmatic presupposition is the addresser’s subjective intention or assumption in a certain context. To put it in another way, pragmatic presupposition is subjective, indicating itself is not necessarily accurate or factual.

Example (7):

A: How old is your child?

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