Approaching Presupposition In Real Context: A Cognitive Perspective

Presupposition study began in 1892 when Frege put forward this conception in his book"On Sense and Reference". From then on, this conception has attracted attention from both philosophers and linguists who were devoted to giving reliable explanation for presupposition phenomenon. So far, presupposition has experienced four phases of study: philosophical study, semantic study, pragmatic study and the recently-developed cognitive study. However, in spite of the fruitful researches, few are concerned about context's effects on presupposition,not to mention building the context factors into the cognitive study of presupposition. Either from pragmatic perspective or cognitive perspective, linguists only take context for granted as background information when studying presupposition phenomenon or only take one specific factor into consideration,leaving a comprehensive study of it unexplored.Based on this, in this paper, the author introduces context factors into the cognitive study of presupposition with Mental Spaces Theory and tries to find out context factors'effects on presupposition interpretation process. At first, the author describes presupposition in detail, including its conception, classification, trigger and problematic property, and then analyzes presupposition from cognitive perspective with Mental Spaces Theory. After a general description of context, including its conception and classification, the author introduces context factors into the process of cognitive study on presupposition. Through analyzing presupposition in different types of context from cognitive perspective, the author arrives at the conclusion that context factors have positive effects on presupposition interpretation process and can help to get a more specific and better understanding of the presupposition, which will in turn improve our reading comprehension and communication in daily life. The author also points out the limitations of the thesis and suggests the possible research dimensions on this topic in the future.