Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 3
in the corpus as well as the terms used to refer to them throughout the rest of the
thesis.
3.1 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM CORPUS DATA?
Most work and literature on presuppositions had studied them using the method
common to formal semantic work. Researchers create examples sentences that
illustrate the use of the presupposition trigger and then examine how the
presupposed information in the sentence is affected or alternatively affects
different contexts, in the form of different types of logical embeddings in complex
sentences or made-up discourses manipulated so that different logical relationships
will hold. This kind of research was introduced in the last chapter. This is very
important work and has given us a great deal of information about what logical
properties presuppositions have and what other linguistic and contextual properties
interact with and affect presuppositions.
However, there are many aspects of presupposition that this method can say
very little about, but which natural language examples taken from a corpus can
contribute to our understanding of what presuppositions are and how they are
used. Corpus work can tell us about preferences for using presuppositions with
different resolution properties. Presuppositions induced by different trigger types
do have similar logical properties, and similar potentials to use these properties, but
we cannot learn anything about whether or not these potentials are actually utilized
as a major function of the presuppositions induced without studying
presupposition in context, and looking at the frequencies of the resolutions
categories. We can’t actually be sure either if the logical properties that theoretically
are found with each trigger type actually occur. For example, do all presuppositions
actually occur under all types of embeddings? There may be subgroups of triggers
that induce presuppositions that behave quite differently than others. Many of the
classic examples may have special properties we are unaware of. Another advantage
to using corpus data in general is that we should be able to disambiguate usages
that in isolation would allow several resolutions. We can also see what it is in the
message and the context that allows us to disambiguate.
Corpus data can help us say something about what kind of thing
presuppositions are for language users. What does the ability to use presupposition
allow a speaker to communicate that other linguistic devices do not, and what
contribution does the presupposition make to the hearers understanding of the
message? These are questions that I would like to at least partially answer in this
work.
Certain aspects of the corpus analysis might have been simpler if I had
chosen to use written data rather than unrestricted dialogue. But spoken data has
two advantages over written data that I think are particularly relevant to
presupposition. First, spoken language in contrast to written language allows us to
see the effects of memory or processing limitations on the use of presuppositions.
By looking at spoken dialogue we can also see if the induced presuppositions serve
50