How Presupposition Processing Is Affected By Concession And Causality Conjunctions

Presupposition is to infer the implied information of the sentence according to the speaker's utterance,the context as well as the background knowledge shared by both parties,so as to understand the intention of the speaker accurately.Presupposition was originally philosophical and logical concepts.Since the 1960 s,presupposition entered the field of linguistics,linguists have done a lot of research on it but most of them are focused on the presupposition trigger which is the specific words conveying presupposed meaning,the function or application of the presupposition.These studies have found that when these triggers are presented in a sentence,the hearer can quickly infer the information implied in the speaker's words and may do so as the speaker wishes.Hence,the presupposition trigger makes the conversation between speaker and hearer more simple and convenient.However,previous studies of presupposition trigger mainly focused on English factive verbs(such as regret,know and realize and so on),definite descriptions(such as a,the,only,again and so on)and some phrases or subordinate clause to study the cognitive processing mechanism of presupposition,however little is known about how presupposition trigged by conjunction influence sentence processing.A conjunction is a function word that connects different words,clauses,or sentences to indicate a logical relationship.Whether there are conjunctions in sentences and the types of conjunctions have a direct impact on people's understanding of utterance.Among many conjunctions,linguists have done a lot of research on causal and concessive conjunctions.Evidence from previous studies show that there are different mechanisms of processing causal and concessive conjunctions due to their differences in logical relations.However,it remains unclear how the presupposed information conveyed by causal and concession conjunctions influence sentence comprehension.Therefore,using Event-related potential technique,the present study investigates 1)How the processing of presupposition information is influenced by two different conjunctions(although / because)? 2)How the consistency of presupposition information and encyclopedic knowledge affects sentence comprehension? As this experiment is to study reader's presupposition processing about a certain occupation's feature or a kind of people with certain typical characteristics under the condition of Chinese conjunctions,thesentence structure used in the experiment is “Noun(name)is very + adjective,(no-conjunction / although / because)he / she is a + Noun”(e.g.Liran is very shrewd,he is a businessman.).The results show that in the early time window(150-250ms),compared to because-congruent sentences,critical words(e.g.businessman)in the no-conjunction-congruent sentences elicit an early positive effect(P200);As for incongruent sentences,relative to critical words in although sentences and in because sentences,critical words in no-conjunction sentences evoke a P200 effect.In 300-450 ms time window,under congruent condition,critical words in sentences which contain conjunctions(although / because)evoke a larger N400 than the critical words in no-conjunction sentences.But there is no difference between although and because sentences;With regard to incongruent condition,critical words in because sentences elicit a larger N400 than those in although sentences.In the late time window,relative to critical words in no-conjunction sentences and in because sentences,critical words in the although sentences evoke a late positive effect(P600)under congruent condition,whereas there is no difference between them under incongruent condition.The present study suggests that under the condition of three kinds of conjunctions,the sentence of causality expresses a clear causality,so the reader is more likely to regard it as an assertion rather than a presupposition;while the concessive conjunction is a negative causal relationship.Hence it is not easy for people to understand the meaning of sentence directly.Therefore taking on the causal and concessive conjunctions as the triggers do not make the processing of presupposition easier.