Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 5
(10) factive, triggered p: Your scientist is going for question one (1-1 942) (LOCAL)
Speaker B: And let‘s have your literature question, let‘s have it in the same position
every time so that your scientist will know that he‘s going for question
one, your literature person will go for question two and . they don‘t have
to read the two *passages* and decide *.*#|
Speaker A: **# **#|
Speaker B is discussing his ideas for how an examination could be improved to
make it more relevant for students from the natural sciences (referred to as
scientists, or as here, your scientist contrasted here with students from the liberal arts,
your literature person) and the discussion begins several lines previous to his
statement. Future tense, as well as phrases such as let‘s have are all signals of the
modal subordinating context.
Global accommodation would lead to an interpretation where the natural
science student (your scientist) knows he/she is going for question one even before
the new format for examinations has been mentioned, making it a rather illogical
choice. The entire discussion distinguishing questions for literature students from
questions for natural science students. We understand from the earlier context (not
presented here) that natural science students prefer to answer questions dealing
with non-fiction texts, and standardizing the order of questions will make it easier
for these students to quickly find this question. The assertional meaning of the
sentence is that the scientist will be ‘aware’ of which question he is going for, and
not that he will be going for an already existing question. Local accommodation
could also be argued to be preferred because question one only exists within this
hypothetical discussion, there is no question one in the test as it is now, at least not
with properties that the new version of the test will give question one. This also
makes it a kind of trapping. It may also be that the discussion of how the exam will
be set up is sufficient for the discourse participants to infer the existence of two
questions, but in that case question one still refers to the question in the new format
will be represented by a reference marker introduced within the hypothetical
discussion.
Other cases of presupposition triggered under embedding could be
understood as cases of a kind of implicit trapping. Example (11) below is an
excerpt from a discussion concerning the difference between signs and symptoms in
which the general usage of the terms is discussed. A hypothetical X-ray and what
you could see in it is used as an example.
(11) factive, triggered p: Things are blocked up ‘in X-ray‘(2-9 1132)
Speaker B: Signs are the only things you can observe, like if you took an X-ray and
saw that things were blocked up or something.
There is only one level of explicit embedding created by the if, so only global and
local accommodation are available. Possible interpretations for global and local
accommodation are the following:
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