Presuppositions cross-linguistically: A comparison of soft and hard triggers in Chinese and German

IF 1.8 2区文学 N/A LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Intercultural Pragmatics Pub Date : 2024-03-29 DOI:10.1515/ip-2024-2001

Yuqiu Chen, Mailin Antomo

{"title":"Presuppositions cross-linguistically: A comparison of soft and hard triggers in Chinese and German","authors":"Yuqiu Chen, Mailin Antomo","doi":"10.1515/ip-2024-2001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Presuppositions are typically considered as projective inferences that are triggered by certain expressions and taken for granted. Whereas Simons (Simons, Mandy. 2001. On the conversational basis of some presuppositions. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 11. 431–448) observes that expressions with a similar semantic content belonging to the same language give rise to the same presupposition, this has not been investigated in a systematic way for semantically equivalent expressions from different languages. Furthermore, more recent research has shown that different presupposition triggers are characterized by differing projective strength, therefore, a distinction of highly projective hard triggers and less projective soft triggers has been proposed (Abusch, Dorit. 2002. Lexical alternatives as a source of pragmatic presuppositions. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 12. 1–19, Abusch, Dorit. 2010. Presupposition triggering from alternatives. Journal of Semantics 27(1). 37–80). Here, we present an experiment comparing four classical presupposition triggers from German and their counterparts in Chinese (cleft sentences, win, factive predicates regret and discover) in order to a) investigate the cross-linguistic stability of their projective strength and b) to verify the heterogeneity of these triggers in both languages. Our results show that the projective behavior and the heterogeneity of presuppositions can be considered cross-linguistically stable, at least when suitable equivalences for both languages can be found. Furthermore, our data suggest that the group of soft triggers has to be more heterogeneous than previously assumed. More precisely, whereas hard triggers behave the same way, it is possible that each soft trigger might be soft in its own way. In sum, our experimental investigation aims to improve the understanding of presuppositions, the underlying triggering process and their projective behavior across different languages.","PeriodicalId":13669,"journal":{"name":"Intercultural Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Intercultural Pragmatics","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2024-2001","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"N/A","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Presuppositions are typically considered as projective inferences that are triggered by certain expressions and taken for granted. Whereas Simons (Simons, Mandy. 2001. On the conversational basis of some presuppositions. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 11. 431–448) observes that expressions with a similar semantic content belonging to the same language give rise to the same presupposition, this has not been investigated in a systematic way for semantically equivalent expressions from different languages. Furthermore, more recent research has shown that different presupposition triggers are characterized by differing projective strength, therefore, a distinction of highly projective hard triggers and less projective soft triggers has been proposed (Abusch, Dorit. 2002. Lexical alternatives as a source of pragmatic presuppositions. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 12. 1–19, Abusch, Dorit. 2010. Presupposition triggering from alternatives. Journal of Semantics 27(1). 37–80). Here, we present an experiment comparing four classical presupposition triggers from German and their counterparts in Chinese (cleft sentences, win, factive predicates regret and discover) in order to a) investigate the cross-linguistic stability of their projective strength and b) to verify the heterogeneity of these triggers in both languages. Our results show that the projective behavior and the heterogeneity of presuppositions can be considered cross-linguistically stable, at least when suitable equivalences for both languages can be found. Furthermore, our data suggest that the group of soft triggers has to be more heterogeneous than previously assumed. More precisely, whereas hard triggers behave the same way, it is possible that each soft trigger might be soft in its own way. In sum, our experimental investigation aims to improve the understanding of presuppositions, the underlying triggering process and their projective behavior across different languages.

查看原文本刊更多论文

跨语言预设：汉语和德语中软触发器和硬触发器的比较

预设通常被认为是由某些表达引发的、理所当然的投射性推论。而西蒙斯（Simons, Mandy.2001.On the conversational basis of some presuppositions.语义学和语言学理论 11.431-448）观察到，属于同一语言的语义内容相似的表达会引起相同的预设，但对于不同语言中语义等同的表达，还没有系统的研究。此外，最近的研究表明，不同的预设触发器具有不同的投射强度，因此有人提出了高投射硬触发器和低投射软触发器的区别（Abusch, Dorit.2002.词汇替代作为语用预设的来源。语义学和语言学理论》，第 12 卷，第 1-19 页。1-19, Abusch, Dorit.2010.从替代词触发预设。语义学杂志》27（1）。37-80).在此，我们将德文中的四种经典预设触发器与中文中的对应预设触发器（裂句、赢、事实谓词后悔和发现）进行了实验比较，目的是：a）研究其投射强度的跨语言稳定性；b）验证这些触发器在两种语言中的异质性。我们的研究结果表明，预设的投射行为和异质性可以被认为是跨语言稳定的，至少在两种语言都能找到合适的等价物时是如此。此外，我们的数据还表明，软触发器组的异质性必须比以前假设的更强。更确切地说，虽然硬触发器的行为方式相同，但每个软触发器都有可能以自己的方式实现软触发。总之，我们的实验研究旨在加深对预设、潜在触发过程及其在不同语言中的投射行为的理解。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Intercultural Pragmatics Multiple-

CiteScore

3.10

自引率

36.40%

发文量

期刊介绍： Intercultural Pragmatics is a fully peer-reviewed forum for theoretical and applied pragmatics research. The goal of the journal is to promote the development and understanding of pragmatic theory and intercultural competence by publishing research that focuses on general theoretical issues, more than one language and culture, or varieties of one language. Intercultural Pragmatics encourages ‘interculturality’ both within the discipline and in pragmatic research. It supports interaction and scholarly debate between researchers representing different subfields of pragmatics including the linguistic, cognitive, social, and interlanguage paradigms. The intercultural perspective is relevant not only to each line of research within pragmatics but also extends to several other disciplines such as anthropology, theoretical and applied linguistics, psychology, communication, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, and bi- and multilingualism. Intercultural Pragmatics makes a special effort to cross disciplinary boundaries. What we primarily look for is innovative approaches and ideas that do not always fit into existing paradigms, and lead to new ways of thinking about language. Intercultural Pragmatics has always encouraged the publication of theoretical papers including linguistic and philosophical pragmatics that are very important for research in intercultural pragmatics.

文献相关原料

公司名称	产品信息	采购帮参考价格