Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Accommodation and Presupposition
there is a qualitative difference between the contexts in which the too’s are produced
naturally and the too’s in (35). The naturally occurring too’s will be used in cases
where they are obligatory and then it will be hard to remove them because they are
needed by the context.
It is also possible to argue that what example (35) illustrates is not so much
binding but accommodation of a parallel relationship at a rhetorical level, taking
semantic information of the right types and then joining them in a relationship. A
parallel relationship between two constituents is construed when too is placed in the
vicinity. We are able to perceive a parallel relationship in texts where there were
none simply by inserting too and letting accommodation do the rest. This
explanation requires that we revise our view of what too presupposes. It would also
mean that in practice we could never distinguish well between accommodation and
binding for too because it always finds elements that can serve as its antecedent. 14
This would make it difficult to evaluate claims about too related to its ability to
accommodate.
Clearly we need to know more about what should be considered an
assertional and a bound alternative to accommodating in order to be able to
correctly apply these notions to the data to make predictions about ability to
accommodate or lack. This is the main problem with Blutner and Zeevat’s
explanation. Cases where the proposal makes correct predictions are often
consequences of the way constraints and generated forms interact so that
counterexamples are not produced. This is seen in the explanation that works for
factives, the alternative explanation that works for too, and the changes necessary
for accounting for big definite NPs. But the constraints themselves need to be
motivated by something more than the fact that they will lead to the right
predictions. Also, because what can and cannot be accommodated becomes a
consequence of the generational constraints, we never actually get to an explanation
of what qualities license accommodation, because the answer seems to be external
to the characteristics of the triggered presupposition itself, it has to do with
characteristics of other similar available items.
In summary, the availability of expression alternatives may explain why
pronouns don‘t accommodate, and explain the feeling of anomaly in sentences
where this is attempted. It can either explain why too doesn’t accommodate or it can
explain why factives can accommodate, but not both. It cannot explain why big
definite NPs can accommodate and small ones cannot without adding additional
constraints that in effect seem to define away these counterexamples. It also
prerequisites a method for determining what the expression alternatives of an
expression are. However, it is unclear to what degree the input context plays a role
in determining what alternatives are relevant. It is also unclear whether the
alternatives must be truth-conditionally equivalent or if a stricter, but as of yet not
clearly defined alternative of psychological equivalence is necessary. It is also
14 One potential method could be to check too preserves the naturalness of the utterance then it
most likely was a case of accommodation, but if removing the too makes the utterance awkward,
then we consider it to have been bound.
131