A Study On Presupposition Trigger In Modern Chinese

Presupposition triggers are the words and structures that can trigger presuppositions. This article mainly discusses and analyses the types of presupposition trigger in the modern Chinese. Semantic presupposition-trigger relates to the words, mainly including 7 types. Definite descriptions mainly trigger the existential presuppositions by referring to the entity. But the definiteness is different of the four definite descriptions. The noun of locality relates to the reference of time and space and triggers the existential presuppositions or the factive presuppositions. The preposition often triggers the existential presuppositions, the noun phrase of whose rear is the background. There are three types of the verbs that can trigger the factive presuppositions. The factive verbs presuppose that the object states the fact. The change-of-state verbs presuppose that some state existed before the state changes. The implicative verbs presuppose that the implied meaning is the facts. The iterative verbs trigger the factive presuppositions. As presupposition trigger, the change-of-state verb and the iterative verbs are not typical in the negative sentences. They are likely the conventional implicature. Syntactic presupposition triggers mainly refer to some special sentence patterns , including "ba" construction and "bei" construction that trigger the existential presupposition ; including "lian " construction that relates to the subjective judgment and "bi" construction that presuppose "BX". If the intensifier is in the "bi" construction , the positive sentences presuppose "BX" and the negative presuppose "B bu(不)X" . While"A bi(比)/ bu bi (不比)BX"have the restricted presupposition .The sentences with "是"or"的" marking the focus can trigger presupposition .Non-declarative sentences have the similar presuppositions to the declarative sentences. We may determine the presupposition of the question sentence by the answers. Phonological presupposition trigger is mainly the contrastive stress, belonging to dynamic sentence. It has preferred right of presupposition as compared with others. The potential presupposition is the shared assumptions under the idealized cognitive models, presupposed by the presupposition trigger. It becomes the actual presupposition if it does not contradict with the factors in the context. When the sentences have some presuppositions, the interpreter infers the presupposition of dynamic sentence by the optimal relevance and the presupposition of static sentence by the maximization of relevance.