Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 2
reached. The meaning of the sentence is then the effect it has had on the discourse
representation.
This section should have given the reader a good idea of how DRT works
when resolving anaphors in extended discourse. The next section explains how
DRT has been extended by van der Sandt (1992) to deal with presuppositions.
2.3.2 The Binding Theory
The standard binding theory is explained most thoroughly in van der Sandt (1992)
but was first presented in van der Sandt (1989) and van der Sandt & Geurts (1991).
This theory argues that presuppositions and anaphors are the same kinds of things
and the binding theory extends DRT in order to deal with presuppositions and
anaphors at the level of representation in a similar way.
By anaphors I mean pronominal anaphors and ellipse. Definite NPs have
been treated as presupposition triggers in the previous sections. At the same time,
definite NPs have long been considered to be anaphoric expressions, and
additional confusion arises because often researchers have attributed them with a
presuppositional aspect in addition to their anaphoric properties (see e.g. Heim
1982, 1983). I will treat them as presuppositional expressions, and because the
binding theory analyzes presupposed information in the same way it analyzes
anaphoric information, the analysis that results when they are bound will be the
same as if they were considered to be anaphoric expressions.
Can presuppositions be considered to behave like anaphors? As the
following examples seem to illustrate, we can find cases where the use of an
anaphoric expression and the use of a presuppositional expression in the same
position will have the same truth-conditions. In the four examples below, the asentences
have an anaphoric expression that binds to an intra-sentential antecedent,
a pronoun in (41)a and (44)a, did plus a pronoun in (42)a and an ellipse in (43)a.
The b-sentences are identical except that they each have a presuppositional
expression in the same position, but the induced presupposition does not project.
(41) a. If Frank flirted with Mary, Mary’s husband noticed it.
b. If Frank flirted with Mary, Mary’s husband noticed that Frank flirted with
Mary.
(42) a. If someone told our secret then it was Allison who did it.
b. If someone told our secret then it was Allison who told our secret.
(43) a. If Emar used to smoke then he quit ∅.
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b. If Emar used to smoke then he quit smoking.
(44) a. There is not a King of France and he is not bald.
b. There is not a King of France and the King of France is not bald.