Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Accommodation and Presupposition
There were several examples where it was hard to consider the presupposition to
be a fact. It seems to be an opinion that the speaker wishes the hearer to agree with
or acknowledge, which in some cases they do and in some they don’t. It is hard to
determine if signs of an expectation of agreement are signs that the speaker
expected this to be part of the common ground, or only that they expected the
hearer would agree to accept the presupposition. Here is one example:
(17) factive, triggered p: this is very serious, this = the earlier list of events,
considered (1-9 506)
Speaker C yes#|
Speaker a but [sa] . who else has been responsible for the Carriage and Pair the
Duke of Preston the Apple Tree . do you know that this is *very serious
- we‘ve lost . we‘ve lost several* pubs around here within . sort of living
memory within the last five or six years - and it means that the existing
pubs they‘ve made no new pubs *.* and the existing pubs . which were
. comfortably crowded before my God they‘re packed - you try to get
into the Scarborough for lunch now and it‘s just uncomfortable isn‘t it~|
Speaker C * of town and country planning -#I mean [dhi dhi] BCC*#|
Speaker A *no*#|
Speaker B [m]#|
Speaker ?? [m] .#|
In the next example, the presupposition will need to be locally accommodated
because the subject of the simple tense factive is the Speaker, and it would be
epistemically indefensible to both presuppose the information in the complement
and then deny that one was aware of it. It also seems to clearly be the speaker’s
opinion.
(18) factive, triggered p: those continued supply of funds was justified considered
new, (Local) (2-8a 473)
Speaker B but how would . I mean having said that# at what point would you have
changed it# and how would you have changed it#|
Speaker A well I mean -# [@ dh@ dh@s] they were keen on maintaining the
status quo#
because they kept getting funds from England .#|
Speaker B well~|
Speaker A I don‘t see that those continued supply of funds was justified -#|
Speaker B but then would you have them all thrown out of work# I mean it‘s the
Catholics *. the Catholic minority*#|
5.2.2 Discussion
What do these results tell us about presuppositions and their function, factive
presuppositions in particular? These results confirm what has been shown with itclefts
and definites: that presuppositions can be used as a means to intentionally
communicate information that is hearer-new. For factives this function is far from
unusual, being the main usage of examples found in the corpus data. Why then, do
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