Pragmatic presupposition in Chinese categorization: A figure–ground angle of radicals’ roles in Shuowen Jiezi

Abstract

Lexical Pragmatics has focused to date on implicature by inference in lexicon and the pragmatic presupposition on statements related to sentences (utterances) and text (discourse). This paper aims to address an issue to be termed Lexical Presupposition (LP). The study elaborates on an extended notion of presupposition in the categorization construed in lexis in a historical context on a cognitive basis. In particular, it discusses LP in terms of ostensive inferences in ancient Chinese categorization: the functions of the radicals in their derivatives in Shuowen Jiezi. In fact, these radicals work to constitute a ground–figure opposition with the most salient and characteristic features resembling statement assertions in sentences, which may be called lexical assertions, or LAs, i.e., ‘there is LP’ and ‘LP have/be/do LA’ or LA (LP). This propositional analogy aims to recover or reconstruct the possible historical mechanisms of categorization and to analyze three general groups of LPs that contain a number of sub-types: constitutional (meronymic, taxonomic, material), manner (means [agent, instrument, and medium] and comparison-and-contrast), and other minor ones. In these processes, metaphors play an important role. The findings of this paper should be applicable to word formation in other languages, such as Indo-European languages.