Vol. 16, Issue 1, Jul-Dec 2023

Page: 14-23

Investigating Lexical Presupposition Triggers in Iraqi Arabic Newspapers Headlines

Dr. Ashraf Abdulwahid Dhannoon

Received Date: 2025-01-02

Accepted Date: 2025-02-07

Published Date: 2025-02-18

The present study investigates the categories of lexical presupposition triggers utilized in Iraqi Arabic newspaper headlines. Understanding these triggers is crucial for comprehending how editors convey specific functions by using lexical triggers in newspaper headlines. The data consists of sixty newspaper headlines from the online archives of four major Iraqi newspapers. A pragmatic model is adopted for analyzing the data. The model is based on the lexical presupposition triggers listed in Karttunen's (1971) and Yule's (1996) works. A qualitative approach is used to determine whether these triggers convey the pragmatic functions of newspaper headlines. The study reveals that all lexical presupposition triggers are used in the data under investigation, with non-implicative, change of state verbs and verbs of judging effectively conveying all the pragmatic functions. However, implicative, factive, non-factive, and iteratives do not. The study also concludes that the impact of these triggers on newspaper headlines is influenced by the correlation between the trigger and the rest of the headline.

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