Conceptual Integration And The Understanding Of Pragmatic Presupposition

Human verbal communication is a process of great complexity in which pragmatic presupposition plays a very important role. As one of the most controversial issues in linguistic filed, it has been addressed from various perspectives by scholars around the world. Since it is related to both the speaker and the listener, it is important the listener should understand the pragmatic presupposition in a correct way so that he catches what the speaker means by that particular utterance. This process requires a lot of cognitive efforts and is involved with a series of cognitive operations. Until now, there has not been a widely accepted theory for the description of these cognitive operations in understanding pragmatic presupposition.This dissertation tends to describe the cognitive operations in understanding pragmatic presuppositions in human verbal communication from the perspective of mental space and conceptual integration under Conceptual Integration Theory. The author argues that the triggers of presupposition also work as space builders. During the process of understanding pragmatic presupposition, the triggers help listener to construct a cognitive context in which the spaces are built and integrated, and finally determine what exactly the speaker's intention is. This study may get a new view of the triggering, projection, transference and defeasibility of presupposition in human verbal communication.At first, the author gives an introduction of the study of pragmatic presupposition. Then he points out the limitations of previous studies and introduces the objectives and method of the study in this essay. The first chapter is a brief review of presupposition studies, including the philosophical foundation, definitions and features and several important theories in this study. Chapter two includes a brief introduction of Conceptual Integration Theory and mental spaces. The third chapter is the main part of the thesis which puts emphasis on the description of processes of understanding pragmatic presupposition from the perspective of Conceptual Integration Theory. In the last chapter a conclusion is drawn for the whole thesis.