Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 4
(3) Gudrun spent the entire day playing with her son. Later that evening when she
realized how much work she had yet to do, she regretted it.
The semantic type of the anaphoric expression is usually coded in the predicate of
the sentence in which it functions as an argument, such as above where the factive
verb regret signals that the anaphoric expression refers to a fact. This observation is
made by Asher (1993), and Dahl & Hellman (1995), and is one of the many clues
used in distinguishing concrete reference from abstract object anaphoric reference.
Eckert & Strube (2000) outline heuristics for resolving pronominal anaphors in a
corpus study of spoken English, using different types of information about typical
predicates to determine if a pronoun was consistent with abstract object anaphoric
reference or with individual anaphoric reference. But because the semantic type of
the anaphoric expression and the semantic type of the antecedent may differ due to
type-shifting, knowing the semantic type of the anaphoric expression does not
always help in identifying the antecedent, as illustrated in example (3). 4 Also note
that there are some limitations on type-coercion. For example, Eckert & Strube
(2000) point out that for example event anaphors will not be able to coerce an
antecedent from a state. In addition, facts can always derive antecedent from
events, but events cannot always derive antecedents from facts. There may be other
limitations as well that could aid in resolving abstract object anaphors and perhaps
induced presuppositions of these types as well.
Webber (1991), Asher (1993) and Eckert & Strube (2000) have pointed out
that the availability of antecedents for abstract objects influenced or constrained
more by discourse structure than anaphoric reference to more concrete entities.
This may be because anaphoric expressions which are generally used to refer to
abstract objects, such as e.g. that or it, are some of the semantically least specified
anaphoric forms available in English and cannot aid much in identifying the
referent. It may also be because in many cases semantically abstract objects are
believed to be in part delimited by the information contained in a single discourse
segment. That is, the discourse segment itself that provides a referent for the
anaphoric reference, making it more dependent on this segment.
It is not always the case that anaphoric expressions have clear, individuated
antecedents in the discourse. Dahl & Hellman (1995) discuss how the use of some
anaphoric expressions instigates a process of reification that leads to the creation of
its own referent to serve as an antecedent. The anaphor itself is not merely serving
an identification purpose so that descriptive information can be associated with it,
but rather adds a new semantic individual in the discourse made from information
given, or “collected” from the discourse context. This type of referent-creating
process is common in anaphoric reference to non-identity antecedents such as
abstract object anaphoric reference.
4 Note also that this sentence contains another fact which can be derived from the complement
of realized, e.g. Gudrun had much work yet to do, yet this is not the preferred resolution.
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