Presupposition, the linguistic act of treating information as mutually shared or taken for granted, is a cornerstone of effective social interaction. To examine how this competence emerges in early childhood, the present study adopted a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative analyses of peer-to-peer conversations among 80 Mandarin-speaking preschoolers (aged 3–6). Quantitatively, the results revealed a clear developmental trajectory shaped by cognitive constraints. Statistic analysis indicated significant age-related growth in frequency of presupposition usage. Notably, children across all age groups showed a robust preference for “restricted structures” (e.g., definite descriptions) over verbal or clausal triggers. Qualitatively, the analysis identified four key developmental characteristics: (a) a default, usage-based deployment of triggers reflecting emergent linguistic competence; (b) the strategic use of shared knowledge as a conversational initiator; (c) the employment of elliptical responses as “communicative economizers”; and (d) the creative use of novel responses to manipulate shared assumptions for intentional goals. These findings support an emergentist framework, suggesting that presuppositional competence arises from the dynamic interplay of cognitive maturation and social exposure. The study concludes by outlining a theoretical model of presupposition development, offering new insights into how children navigate presupposition meaning in naturalistic peer interactions.
AbbedutoL.RosenbergS. (1985). Children’s knowledge of the presuppositions ofknow an -d other cognitive verbs. Journal of Child Language, 12(3), 621–641. https://doi.org/10.10 17/S0305000900006693
2.
AnS.BillC.RangQ. (2020). Comprehension of the presupposition trigger “Also” by mandarin-speaking preschoolers with and without autism spectrum disorders. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 570453. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570453
3.
AntinucciF.VolterraV. (1978). Lo sviluppo della negazione nel linguaggio infantile: Uno studio pragmatico. In CamaioniL. (Ed.), Sviluppo del linguaggio e interazione sociale. Bologna: II Mulino. [English translation in: OchsE.SchieffelinB. (Eds.). (1979). Developmental Pragmatics. Academic Press.]
BavinL. (2009). The Cambridge handbook of child language. Cambridge University Press.
8.
Blum-KulkaS.Huck-TaglichtD.AvniH. (2004). The social and discursive spectrum of peer talk. Thematic issue of discourse studies: Peer talk and pragmatic development, 6(3), 307–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445604044291
CamaioniL. (1979). Child-adult and child-child conversations: An interactional approach. In OchsE.SchieffelinB. B. (Eds.), Developmental Pragmatics (pp. 325–337). Academic Press.
ChengL. L.ZhangT.ZhanL. L.LiuY. Q.FuB. Q.PengY. L. (2024). An empirical study on the development of pragmatic presupposition ability in preschool children. Foreign Language Bimonthly, 4, 30–38.
13.
ChenS. Y.TormaC.AravindA. (2022). Non-uniformities in the development of presupposition projection in if-conditionals. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
DomaneschiF.Di PaolaS.PouscoulousN. (2022). The development of presupposition: Pre-schoolers’ understanding ofregret and too. Intercultural Pragmatics, 19(3), 345–379. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2022-3004
16.
DudleyR.OritaN.HacquardV.LidzJ. (2015). Three-year-olds’ understanding of know and think. In SchwarzF. (Ed.), Experimental perspectives on presuppositions (pp. 241–262). Springer International Publishing.
17.
FariniF. (2011). Cultures of education in action: Research on the relationship between interaction and cultural presuppositions regarding education in an international educational setting. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 2176–2186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.02.001
HacquardV.LidzJ. (2019). Children’s attitude problems: Bootstrapping verb meaning from syntax and pragmatics. Mind & Language, 34(1), 73–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12192
24.
HakanssonG.HanssonK. (2000). Comprehension and production of relative clauses: A comparison between Swedish impaired and unimpaired children. Journal of Child Language, 27, 313–333. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900004128
25.
HallE. T. (1977). Beyond culture. Anchor Books.
26.
HeZ. R.RanY. P. (2010). An introduction to Pragmatics: A new perspective. Peking University Press.
27.
HeimI. (1983). On the projection problem for presuppositions. In Bar-lowM.FlickingerD.WestcoatM. (Eds.), Second annual west coast conference on formal linguistics (pp. 114–126), Stanford University.
28.
HöhleB.BergerF.MüllerA.SchmitzM.WeissenbornJ. (2009). Focus particles in children’s language: Production and comprehension of Auch “also” in German learners from 1 year to 4 years of age. Language Acquisition, 16(1), 36–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/10489220802584550
29.
HopmannM. R.MaratsosM. P. (1978). A developmental study of factivity and negation in complex syntax. Child Language, 5, 295–309. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900007480
30.
HuangY. (2007). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
31.
HuangY. (2017). Conversational implicature. In HuangY. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics, OUP.
32.
HuangB.LiaoX. (2007). Modern Chinese (Vol. 2, 4th ed.). Higher Education Press.
33.
JiA. F. (2009). A study of Chinese presupposition triggers [Doctoral thesis]. Nankai University, Tianjing, China.
34.
JohnsonC. N.WellmanH. M. (1980). Children’s developing understanding of mental verbs: “Remember,” “know,” and “guess.”Child Development, 51(3), 1095–1102. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129549
35.
JouravlevO.StearnsL.BergenL.EddyM.GibsonE.FedorenkoE. (2016). Processing temporal presuppositions: An event-related potential study. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31(10), 1245–1256. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1209531
LevinsonS. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
43.
LiL. H.ZhouJ. (2008). Metacommunication development of children aged from three to six during their collaborative pretend play [Master’s thesis]. East China Normal University.
44.
LiuH. J.PanH. H.HuJ. H. (2011). The acquisition of additive operators in Mandarin Chinese. Contemporary Linguistics, 13, 193–216.
45.
MacnamaraJ.BakerE.OlsonC. L. (1976). Four-year-olds’ understanding of “Pretend,” “Forget,” and “Know”: Evidence for propositional operations. Child Development, 47(1), 62–70. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128283
46.
MacWhinneyB. (2004). A multiple process solution to the logical problem of language acquisition. Child Language, 31(4), 883–914. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000904006336
MatsuokaK.MiyoshiN.HoshiK.UedaM.YabuI.HirataM. (2006). The acquisition of Japanese focus particles: Dake “only” and mo “also.”Proceedings of the 30th Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
ScovilleR. P.GordonA. M. (1980). Children’s understanding of factive presuppositions: An experiment and a review. Journal of Child Language, 7(2), 381–399. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900002695
59.
SeymourM. (2013). Speech act pluralism, minimal content, and pragmemes. In CaponeF.Lo PiparoA.CarapezzaM. (Eds.), Perspectives on pragmatics and philosophy (pp. 245–276). Springer.
60.
SmithM.ApperlyI.WhiteV. (2003). False belief reasoning and the acquisition of relative clause sentences. Child Development, 74(6), 1709–1719. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3696299
SyrettK.KennedyC.LidzJ. (2010). Meaning and context in children’s understanding of gradable adjectives. Journal of Semantics, 27(1), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffp011
66.
TarskiA. (1933). The concept of truth in formalized languages. In TarskiA. (Ed.), Logic, semantics, metamathematics: Papers from 1923 to 1938 (pp. 152–278). Clarendon Press.
67.
TomaselloM. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Harvard University Press.
68.
TomaselloM. (2008). Origins of human communication. MIT Press.
69.
van der SandtR. A. (1992). Presupposition projection as Anaphora resolution. Journal of Semantics, 9(4), 333–377. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/9.4.333
70.
WangY. P. (2011). Study on Chinese presupposition. China Social Sciences Press.
71.
WeistR. (2002). The first language acquisition of tense and aspect: A review. In SalaberryM. R.ShiraiY. (Eds.), The L2 acquisition of tense-aspect morphology (pp. 21–78). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.27.05wei
72.
WilliamV. C. (1979). Sociolinguistic patterns in adult-child interaction. In OchsE.SchieffelinB. B. (Eds.), Developmental pragmatics (pp. 373–389). Academic Press.
73.
YangQ.JiangX.ZhouX. (2022). Presupposition processing in language comprehension. Advances in Psychological Science, 30(7), 1511–1523. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1042.2022.01511
