Studies On Presupposition In Communication

Presupposition has been previously studied as a kind of language phenomenon by linguists. It is initially studied as a kind of semantic issue because it seems to be based more closely on certain linguistic structures. Then with the development of pragmatics linguists began to propose a series of pragmatic theories to explain presupposition and now it has become an important topic in pragmatics. In pragmatics presupposition is studied as a kind of inference which is part of human verbal communication. Due to the cognitive basis of human verbal communication presupposition in communication in this sense is no longer a kind of language phenomenon which concerns the utterance itself but a basic step of the speaker's utterance construction which works as a kind of human cognition. Studying presupposition from this cognitive aspect can make linguists know more about the working processes of the communicator's cognition and the models of human language cognitive ability. When communication is viewed from a cognitive perspective, presupposition is the speaker's assuming of the hearer's cognitive environment in advance during his utterance construction, which is for guarantee of relevance of his utterance. Presupposition is involved in the whole process of human communication: it is produced in the speaker's cognitive environment and works in utterance construction as a context element; then it is implied in certain linguistic structure and transmitted to the hearer; last it is accommodated by the hearer and guarantees the relevance of the utterance. The successfulness of presupposition will influence the processing effort and contextual effect of the hearer directly in her utterance understanding and influence relevance of the speaker's utterance. Therefore presupposition has a very close relation with relevance. The speaker's presupposition is for relevance and it actually works as basis of relevance. Previous studies on presupposition focus on the aspects of truth value of presupposition, presupposition triggers, presupposition projection and informative presupposition. When communication is viewed from a cognitive perspective, the truth value of presupposition represents the consistency between the assumption the speaker has made upon the hearer's cognitive environment and the actual cognitive environment of the hearer; presupposition triggers are not real triggers of presupposition but linguistic forms in which presupposition is conveyed; presupposition projection problem is accounted for the fact that same language forms may play different roles in different utterances. Informative presupposition is due to the different language forms the speaker has adopted for sake of relevance of his utterance. At last, in later study of presupposition more attention should be paid to the process of presupposition of the speaker in his utterance construction, which will contribute to our more knowledge about nature of presupposition and better understanding of related phenomena.