Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

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Chapter 6 they also are usually relationships that would be difficult to resolve using in a bridging relationship if the link is not explicitly marked. This is perhaps because many of the examples where the bridging NP is explicitly marked with of it, are qualitatively different than those without. Poesio et al. (1997) consider this a special group and refers to them as ‘restrictive post-modification definites,’ remarking that it presents special problems for analysis in that it is easy to identify the anchor, but hard to describe the link to the bridging NP. The NPs in these cases could seldom function well with a bridging interpretation in a context where the link isn’t explicitly marked. One example of this found in the corpus was the precision of it, where it referred to Latin. It is possible to identify the precision of it as related to Latin but it is difficult to make the same type of bridge between Latin in one utterance and the precision in another without additional clues. This is because the link between the two elements is not conventional, lexically or encyclopedically. That the link is not conventional may be one of the reason behind the use of the modifier, it provides an explicit clue to the relationship. Additionally, because their resolution does not really involve inferences they differ from Clark’s description of the bridging process. This also strongly suggests that these examples are qualitatively different from other bridging examples. Many have anchors that come after the bridging NP, which is why Poesio et al. (1997) identify them as restrictive postmodification definites. This means they are not backwards referring, i.e. also differing greatly from most anaphoric expressions. Third, I think there should be a distinction made between semantic individuals introduced via presuppositions and those introduced via assertion. In their definition of bridging, Asher & Lascarides (1998a) make the point that the same type of information will be needed to make an inference between some indefinites and the context, as between definite NPs and the context. Therefore, these indefinites should be treated by the same method. But this confuses method of resolution with the semantic category of the information which needs to be resolved and also ignores speaker intentions in generation. Asserted and presupposed information may be related to the context in ways that seem superficially similar but their semantic contributions are clearly different. Treating indefinites and definites in a similar manner ignores the information contributed by the article. 14 Indefinite NPs are qualitatively different in their relationship to the context in that they are not signaled by any marking as anaphoric. Finally, reference to abstract objects does not fit well with the requirements proposed above for three reasons. First, they are referring to abstract objects and not concrete individuals. They could therefore be considered a kind of co-reference relationship, but of a form where there can be semantic type changes that are instigated by the form of the referring expression. Second, there are already very well thought out proposals for dealing with these examples. The means by which 14 It is generally agreed that indefinites and definites have different functions in English, the language studied here. If it were not an important distinction, then we could do away with definite and indefinite marking which many languages do, but it is also generally acknowledged that they then communicate the same information by other means. 178
Between Binding and Accommodation they are resolved are also quite different, e.g. the fact that they are constrained by the discourse structure distinguishes them from other bridging cases as well. They involve a reification of already discourse-given information. Third, they do not add new information or a new reference marker in the same way as other bridging examples. The group that remains is the kinds of examples that interpreters identify as new, but related to something(s) in the discourse. This follows from their fulfillment of the first two requirements. For bridging the feature we should be most interested in is the introduction of a new individual to the discourse, not the addition of descriptive or attributive information to discourse-given individuals. How does this all fit in with our treatment of triggered presuppositions in the binding theory of presupposition? If we treat the group of relationships that fulfill the three criteria above as licensed by the context in which they are used, rather than in relation to another discourse individual, then bridging examples need to be treated as a category separate from binding and accommodation. Definite NPs resolved by bridging need be identified for the way in which bridging information is dependent on information in the discourse, while at the same time they will introduce a new reference marker in the representation. Reconsider example (5) repeated below for convenience. (21) If Drew buys a new car, then he’ll ruin the brakes in a month with his crazy driving. Here, the reference marker for the brakes has to be added to either the antecedent or the consequent of the conditional. The antecedent of his crazy driving on the other hand, can be globally accommodated. The bridging NP the brakes will introduce a new reference marker in one of these contexts, and the information that the brakes are part of the car must also be added. Thus bridging involves the addition of a new reference marker and the addition of descriptive information that explicitly links the new reference marker to an already given reference marker. My suspicion is that if the rest of the representation is in order, the actual anchor chosen should not matter because the other anchors should be able to be calculated or determined from the representation when needed for interpretation. In this way the representation of bridging NPs in a richer context than (21) above should be able to account for all the relevant intuitions that interpreters may have about how the different individuals in the discourse are related, i.e. all the multiple anchors. One final point: Some of the relationships identified as bridging in Clark’s taxonomy may actually be better understood as resolved by accommodation, in particular the ones that demand a much greater “bridge,” such as inducible parts. A case in point is the classic example given as (2) and repeated below for convenience. It seems that the bridging NP the chandeliers is more appropriate to consider as accommodated, because it seems that understanding its relationship to the room is a link created after the recognition of the chandelier. This is qualitatively 179
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Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse
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Abstract Naturally produced example
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5.3.2 Lack of expression alternativ
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irrational. Very warm thanks to Jul
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Chapter 1 work about presupposition
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Chapter 1 There are three core char
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Chapter 2 2.5 briefly outlines seve
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Chapter 2 (1999, p. 6). In the foll
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Chapter 2 Because true presuppositi
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Chapter 2 presupposed information i
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Chapter 2 KofF(x)) will be expanded
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Chapter 2 (28) There is a king of F
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Chapter 2 because constraints on th
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Chapter 2 (32) In the representatio
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Chapter 2 information that there is
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Chapter 2 reached. The meaning of t
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Chapter 2 representation in some ca
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Chapter 2 part of the presuppositio
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Chapter 2 (49) a. Julia doesn’t h
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Chapter 2 (53) If John has grandchi
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Chapter 2 2.4 THE SATISFACTION THEO
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Chapter 2 updated context is subtra
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Chapter 2 Julia doesn’t have a br
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Chapter 2 saliency on antecedent av
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Chapter 2 describing defeasible inf
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Data and Method 3 Data and Method E
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Data and Method the communicative r
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Data and Method Speaker B. Speaker
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3.3 THE EXCERPTED EXAMPLES AND ANAL
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Data and Method Additional excerpti
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Accommdation Binding Total number o
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Chapter 4 perceiving the coherence
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Chapter 4 (1) The doctor and the pa
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Chapter 4 (3) Gudrun spent the enti
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Chapter 4 None of the triggered pre
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Chapter 4 Speaker A: Oh no, it‘s
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Chapter 4 Speaker A How‘s things
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Chapter 4 collaborative evidenced w
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Chapter 4 This makes determining re
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Chapter 4 Speaker C: *Presumably* (
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Chapter 4 directions, it is necessa
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Chapter 4 Other corpus work has als
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Chapter 4 Consider the following ex
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Chapter 4 Speaker B Really awful, I
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Chapter 4 and its elements. The use
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Chapter 4 Here I will first give so
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Chapter 4 same as the last referenc
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Chapter 4 anaphors, suggesting that
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Chapter 4 For many of the examples,
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Accommodation and Presupposition 5
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Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

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