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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源/自:751:;论-文'网www.751com.cn
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 pided 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.