Lexical and Syntactic Presupposition Triggers in Selected Online English and Kurdish Political News Texts: A comparative Study

This paper intends to analyze the presupposition triggers at both lexical and syntactic levels in selected online English and Kurdish political news texts. This is for the purpose of figuring out how texts in political news are achieving their political intentions via the use of presupposition triggers. Presupposition as a feature of language use is commonly exploited by language users. Expressions and constructions carrying presuppositions are called “presupposition triggers”. Its role in the news text is of specific importance in that writers of text tend to make use of this property so as to create either a favorable or unfavorable bias throughout the text this is to manipulate readers‟ view. A descriptive analytic method has been used in this study. The data of this study is the political news texts in online English and Kurdish news channels, then 18 political news texts, which are released in the first half of the year 2020, have been selected randomly. Based on Levinson (1983), Yule (2010), and He‟s (2003) classification of presupposition triggers the data have been analyzed and compared. The result of this study has shown that both English and Kurdish political news texts basically use both lexical and syntactic items of presupposition triggers. As for the lexical triggers, English political news texts constituted 530 times of occurring and Kurdish political news texts constituted 361 times. Regarding the syntactic level, the frequency of occurrence has been 185 times in the English news texts while it is 99 times in the Kurdish texts. All the syntactic items were more frequently used in the English texts except for the counter-factual conditionals which was the same as the Kurdish texts occurring 11 times. Adverbial clauses have recurred 23 times in the Kurdish texts and therefore ranking first among the other structural triggers. Finally, in the English texts, implicative verbs were noted only 1times while 11 occurrences were noted in the Kurdish texts. Article Info Received: June, 2020


Introduction
News writers use language to provide information, it is available in both the printed and electronic media. Newspaper, as a type of printed news, is still depended on by many people to know about the recent happenings. Furthermore, radio, television, and internet are also used as a source of knowing about the recent events. The news that can be updated every second or minute is called "online news". Nowadays, people prefer reading the online news rather than the printed ones, this is because it is easier and simpler to read. Through writing the news, writers try to influence the reader"s understanding or opinion this is by the way of using language. Zare", Abbaspour, & Rajaee Nia (2012:734) try to support this idea by stating that "the use of language in the mass media has an important role by media writers to attempt consciously or unconsciously to influence the understanding of the news event". It means that the writers can be bias in giving their opinion value when they write about an issue, the readers are brought out to trust or taken as granted. Pragmatics, especially presupposition, is the field of linguistics that have connection with the use of language in media.
Presupposition was originally studied in the philosophy of language and then introduced and came into the field of linguistics. As a general feature of language use, presupposition has been defined by Richardson (2007:63) as "the information triggered by certain linguistic constructions which is irrefutably credited as absolute truth by participants in an utterance in a specific context". In fact, Bekalu (2006:153) claims that as an inherent part of the language, "it is virtually impossible to utter or write a single sentence of any consequence without making some kind of assumption". Moreover, Yule (1996:25) points out that assumption is a way before making an utterance by a speaker, the assumption is called as a presupposition.
This presupposition does not exist in the sentences but it only exists in the mind of the speaker or writer. Besides, presupposition can be used to analyze the text of news story. In using presupposition, the intended meaning is assumed to be true based on the speaker"s utterance or the writer"s statement and it is interpreted by the hearer or the reader. Though, this property of presupposition is not the basic concern to focus on. The truth of the statements that are assumed by the users of language on the behalf of the listeners or readers is what they are really interested in. That is to say, sometimes, the assumed presupposition or knowledge lacks the truth. That is why, by this kind of presupposition, language users (speakers or writers) try to manipulate their listeners" or readers" opinion or understanding.
As the study of presupposition continues, it has been discovered that the use of lexical items or linguistic constructions are typically the producers of presupposition.
Depending on presupposition triggers, the authors may well influence on the reader"s interpretation or opinion of facts and events, forming either a favorable or unfavorable bias through their text.

Presupposition triggers
Many scholars have specified their effort and time in studying and explaining presupposition triggers. Starting with Levinson (1983) who listed thirteen forms of presupposition triggers basing on Karttunen"s (1971) list that include thirty one forms of presupposition trigger. Levinson"s (1983)  Levinson"s kinds of presupposition triggers and divided it into three general groups.

Methodology
To achieve the goal of this descriptive analytic study, The New York Times, BBC News, and CNN international were chosen as three samples of online English news channels, with Rudaw, PUK media, and NRT English representing the online translated Kurdish news channels. Then a total of 18 samples of political news texts are randomly chosen from the news channels which are released in the first half of the year 2020. Nine of these texts are randomly chosen from the mentioned online English news channels and the other nine from the translated Kurdish online news channels. After that, they were subjected to pragmatic analysis in terms of used presupposition triggers. Based on the presupposition trigger classification stated by Levinson (1983), Yule (2010), and He (2003), the frequency and percent of the occurrence of presupposition triggers were examined and counted. Ultimately, the frequently used presupposition triggers in the political texts of the two were identified, compared, and discussed.

Results
The results of analyzing the collected data in both lexical and syntactic levels of presupposition triggers in selected online English and Kurdish political news texts are shown below. Regarding the Kurdish texts, the numbers are 10, 5, and 7 times.

Analysis and Discussion
From the results of the selected political news texts, some findings have been revealed. One can analyze that writers of the English political news texts depend on the presupposition triggers, in both lexical and syntactic level, more than the writers of Kurdish political news texts. However, many similarities and differences have been found. In the lexical level, both English and Kurdish writers highly depend on the verbs of judging. Since verb of judging is related to the Through the iterative verb "restore" it is presupposed that there were a diplomatic relationships before but it was cut there will be a diplomatic relationships again. The writer uses the word "restore" to emphasize that there will always be a stored relationship with Palestinian authority. On the other hand, one of the differences between the English and Kurdish political news is in the use of lexical presupposition triggers. English writers are trying to use particles more than the Kurdish writers, this is to shorten the words so as to avoid lengthiness and prolixity. In addition to that, English writers use particles to stress out the important information, more importantly, to help the reader understand the presupposed information in the political news. In the English texts, restrictive expressions are used more than the Kurdish texts.
Generally, restrictive words refer to the words that are used to modify a noun phrase, including not only some definite and indefinite articles like "a" and "the", but also some adjectival possessive pronouns. Apparently, he feels that it is OK to share government dollars with those who don"t truly need the money, but … .
Here, the writer intentionally wants to draw reader"s attention through the idea of being ok to share government dollars with those who don"t truly need money through expressing the idea in a cleft sentence. This item of presupposition is not highly used by Kurdish political writers compared to the English once.

Conclusion
This study is related to the lexical and From the results, analysis and discussions, one can conclude that writers of the English online political news texts provide many additional information to the reader by using relative clause. And they are more able to attract the reader with the use of presupposition triggers this is to make them understand the political situations, actions and to build specific idea or opinion while reading the political news.
They have more freedom of writing and more courage to ask questions and seek the truth through their writings.