Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 3
56
What is the triggering expression and what is the presupposition it induces?
Is the information triggered already given in the discourse, i.e. can the
presupposition be bound?
Examine the transcript from the beginning of the recording
until the occurrence of the trigger for information similar or identical
to the presupposed material. Is the information given?
If yes,
the presupposed material needs to be bound at
the site linearly closest to the utterance with the
trigger.
If no,
there is no potential antecedent. The information
triggered needs to be accommodated
If the presupposed material is added to the main context is the
addition
- informative, consistent with the information already there,
and will it result in a well-formed DRS (e.g. there are no
variables that will become unbound?)
If yes,
the presupposed material is globally
accommodated in the main context
If no,
try the next level of embedding under the main
context on the accessibility path of the context in
which the presupposition was triggered. Repeat
this procedure until either
the presupposed material can be
accommodated or
the level of embedding reached is the same
context where the presupposition was
induced by the trigger. The material must
be accommodated locally.
For the study, embeddings were considered to be shown by modal verbs,
e.g. can, could, would, may, might, deontic verbs, e.g. should, supposed to, must,
have/has/had to, negation, adverbs such as possible, or maybe, if, then in if-then
complex sentences.
Factive adjectives and verbs are those identified by Karttunen (1971), and
Kiparsky & Kiparsky (1970). Only it-clefts where the clefted constituent was a
noun phrase, verb phrase or adverb were analyzed. Definite NPs could also be
modified by relative clauses, prepositional phrases or adjectives.