Research On Stalnaker's Pragmatic Presupposition

Presupposition is an important concept in linguistic research. It could be studied from aspects of both semantics and pragmatics. Researching on presupposition from semantic point of view is a basic and static method which has some defects because the use of a sentence or a statement always concerns with certain contexts. Therefore, it should also be studied from a pragmatic point of view. It is Robert C. Stalnaker who poses pragmatic presupposition theory first and also works systematically on it. His theory becomes the foundation of modern pragmatic presupposition theory and has long term consequences on latter scholars.This paper takes Stalnaker's pragmatic presupposition theory as the subject of my research. It explains and analyzes the researches Stalnaker does on pragmatic presupposition and how he combines his theory with linguistic phenomenon. Three important parts are focused on in this paper----common ground theory, informative presupposition and accommodation theory.The chief frame of Stalnaker's pragmatic presupposition is that presupposition is primarily a property of speakers, not of sentences. A speaker's presuppositions are those propositions which he believes to constitute the accepted background information for the conversation in which he is engaged. Presupposition as a property of sentences is a secondary notion which is to say that a sentence has a presupposition P is to say that the use of that sentence is appropriate only if the speaker's presuppositions entail p. Presupposition is primarily a relationship between speakers and their propositions, not between propositions or sentences. Stalnaker presents presupposition as a kind of disposition at first. When a speaker presupposes P, he need not actually believe in P. What he need is to act as if he believes in P. Also, he need not actually believe that his audience believes in P. What he need is to act as if he believes that his audience believes in P. However, there is a defect of this disposition theory that a statement's fitness is determined only by the innate state of the speaker. The common background information and common dispositions of speaker and his audience are not constrained.In order to solve this problem, Stalnaker then presents speaker presupposition as common ground. A speaker presupposes P, and he believes in P, and he believes that everyone else in the group believes in P, and he believes that everyone else believes that any other one else in the group believes in P. Therefore, speaker presupposition becomes common ground of everyone in the group. However, no one in the group need actually believe in P. What they need is to accept P instead of believing in P. Thus common ground is defined as a common belief which is accepted by everyone in the group.It has been proved that speakers can have mistaken beliefs about the common ground and utter a presupposing sentence knowing full well that the presuppositions of the sentence are not in the common ground. Nevertheless, such utterances may be entirely appropriate. Such uses of presupposing sentences are called informative presuppositions. In the course of informative presupposition, the speaker need not really assume that his audience recognizes in advance that he is taking something for granted. In some cases, the real purpose of making a statement may be to communicate a presupposition which is required by that statement. In this case, the speaker's presupposition P is obviously not the common ground. Stalnaker claims that informative presupposition is not a contradiction to common ground theory of presupposition. Although P is not in common ground when the speaker presupposes P, it becomes common ground at an idealized point after the antecedent but before its evaluation. This paper presents a cognitive point of view to the relationship between informative presupposition and common ground theory. When presupposing P, the speaker considers not only the cognitive environment but also the cognitive ability of his audience. The speaker believes that his audience has the ability of making P as the common ground. Therefore, we may say that in an informative presupposition, the speaker does see P as common ground when he presupposes it.Speakers may have false beliefs about the common ground, and thus come to presuppose propositions which they should not. A speaker may presuppose a false proposition P while his statement is still appropriate because he acts as if he believes in P. However, his audience would probably observe that something has gone a little bit wrong. Now the audience has options to choose. He may refuse to accept P and the communication fails as a result. He may accept P as an accommodation into his own background information and make it become common ground, no matter he really believes in P or he just pretends to believe in P. Accommodation is rather a matter of discourse participants cooperatively trying to match their presuppositions to the presuppositions of others. Therefore, accommodation is not rightly seen as driven by the presupposition requirements of utterances, but only a process for discourse participants of eliminating perceived differences among presuppositions.This paper attempts to make a very clear representation and a very reasonable analysis upon Stalnaker's pragmatic presupposition theory. As no relative Chinese documents have been found in domestic academic circles, this paper could be worth reading. Due to the limited knowledge of the author, quality of this paper is still need to be improved.