Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 5
perspective tells us how complex the resolution task was for a real discourse
participant when interpreting a presuppositional expression.
5.2.1 Hearer-new or hearer-known from the perspective of the speaker?
Factives in the corpus were a trigger type that tended to induce presuppositions
that have to be accommodated. The factive examples were reexamined, paying
particular attention to the context in which the presupposed information was used
and how hearers reacted. Each example was categorized according to whether or
not it seemed as if the speaker believed the presupposed information was known to
the hearer, maybe known to the hearer, maybe new to the hearer, or certainly new
to the hearer, looking for the kind of evidence outlined above. The results are
summarized in Table 7.
112
category known
maybe
known
maybe
new
new
number 15 (18%) 12 (15%) 7 (9%) 47 (58%)
Table 7 information status from the perspective of the speaker in the corpus of the 81
examples of accommodation
The interesting result is that in 47 examples, making up 58% of the entire sample,
the speaker seems to believe that the presupposed information is new to the hearer,
while only in 9 examples is it fairly clear that the speaker believes the information is
shared. Thus, the most frequent function of factive presuppositions in the corpus is
to communicate hearer-new information.
What did the evidence look like that suggested that speakers intended to use
presupposed information to communicate hearer-new information? One common
clue was that the presupposition was foregrounded by being an essential part of a
story the speaker was telling.
(12) factive, triggered p: the tremendous number of claims against the railway
companies were people whose fingers had been caught in doors (1-9 215 C)
Speaker C: *when I* worked on the railways these many years ago .I was . working
in the claims department . at Pretona Station Warmington as office boy
for a short time - and . one NOTICED that the . tremendous number of
claims against the railway - companies were people whose . fingers had
been [sk] caught in doors as the porters had slammed them -.
Speaker A: Really. Oh my *goodness.*
In this example the speaker is telling a story and while some of the information in
the narration may be hearer-known, e.g. that Speaker C once worked for the
railroad, the presupposition is the main point of the story and is clearly believed to
be hearer-new. We also see from Speaker A’s reaction that the information was
hearer-new. Length was mentioned above as clue to informativeness. Here the
complement of the factive that forms the basis of the presupposition is very long,
and this would also seem to be evidence that it is unlikely that all the presupposed
information could be known. Note also that because the presupposition is the main