Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Between Binding and Accommodation
between the anchors will lead to radically different interpretations, as is the cases in
the potentially ambiguous examples tested by Matsui (1995) and shown here as (9)
and (10), and in similar examples found in Erku & Gundel (1987). Instead, in the
examples here the different choices of anchor are usually related to each other, as
well as to the bridging NP.
In the next example, B:[the earliest author that you’ve read at all] was
identified as related(R) by both annotators, though the anchor identified was
different.
(14) (3-1a 169)
Speaker a Yes yes - well now to come back to A:[your reading] [@m . @] would
you say that your favourite reading of . present-day literature was in .
drama or ….
Until 456 (287 lines)
Speaker a Yes, um, what about B:[your earlier reading]. (a)
What‘s C: [the earliest author that you‘ve read at all]? (b)
Speaker A [@m] - - do you mean recently - **
Speaker a *No* at any time~|
Speaker A At any time - -#|
Speaker a Have you read [@ sh @] . pre-Shakespearian drama have you read
any Marlowe say -~|
Speaker A Yes.
The definite NP C:[the earliest author that you’ve read at all] has a modifying
relative clause and would fall into the category of big definite NPs. The author
related it to B:[your earlier reading] and the second annotator related it to an earlier
mention of A:[your reading]. There is also clearly an ambiguity in interpretation
because “your earlier reading” can be interpreted either as “reading that you did at
an earlier time,” in which case it is not as suitable as an anchor, or as “reading from
earlier works,” which would make it a potential anchor. Using the NP [your earlier
reading], to mean this second interpretation is not very precise, but seems to be the
right interpretation given the following utterances made by the interviewer (Speaker
a), though interestingly enough, Speaker A seemed to be confused as well. Note
that utterance (a) and utterance (b) have a common topic, that the first utterance
with the anchor seems to introduce the general topic and the second utterance with
the bridging anaphor is an elaboration on the first topic.
Let’s look at another example. Here Speaker A is trying to describe in what
work of Shakespeare she finds true emotion.
(15) (3-1a 229)
Speaker A in the [@m] – A:[Antony and Cleopatra] - in .B:[when she’s dying] - -
in C: [the death scene] - - - and there I think you get - perfect emotion
.
169