The Use of Presuppositions in the Short Story of Zilkê Şixatê (Matchstick)

Abstract

This study explores the use of presuppositions in the Kurdish short story, Zilkê Şixatê (The Matchstick), which is written in Northern Kurmanji dialect (hence, NK) by Isma’il Hajani. It attempts to determine which type of presupposition is the most recurring one in the short story and why it is so. The data in this study are analyzed descriptively and qualitatively. Yule’s (2006) classification which divides presupposition into six types has been employed: existential, factive, non-factive, lexical, structural, and counterfactual. The data of the research are sentences which contain presupposition triggers (i.e. linguistic forms to mark presuppositions). Applying the formula presented by Oktoma and Mardiyono (2013: 79), the results obtained throughout this paper show that different types of presuppositions have different percentages from the total number of presuppositions. They are (94) in number. It is noted that the most dominant type of presupposition used in the short story is the existential presupposition, manifesting definite descriptions of facts about real life, while the structural presuppositions have the lowest percentage. This shows that much of the story text is written to definitely describe the main theme, the characters and the events as they are. Finally, this study is particularly important because no other such studies have been conducted on the use of presuppositions in any literary work in NK. Therefore, this study occupies a crucial place in the research literature into pragmatic aspects of NK.