Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 4
Speaker A How‘s things -
Speaker c Things is OK - a bit hectic -
Speaker A Yes.
Speaker c I don‘t know we just don‘t seem to [@] get anywhere finish anything.
Speaker A [m] - -
Speaker c It seems to be a totally continuous and you know with this - great
junketing coming up in September.
Speaker c +{I} know+, +we haven‘t+ done anything about it **.
Speaker A *Are you doing [lot] you‘re not* doing lots of arrangings and things - -?
Speaker c Well in principle yes, I don‘t feel that we‘ve actually done very much.
Speaker A *Well it‘s too early*.
Speaker B *What‘s happening in September*.|
Speaker c +Well+.
Speaker A +They‘re getting+ married.
Speaker c We‘re being married.
Speaker B Good gracious - -.
Speaker d ( . laughs).|
Speaker A But surely it‘s {too early}, to start getting ready now, or maybe it‘s isn‘t.
Finally, an example of the trigger too is shown below. As explained in chapter 2, too
is generally treated as triggering the presupposition of an event or state of a type
similar to one in its scope called the theme, with a focus element that is contrasted
with another parallel argument to the argument in the utterance in which the too
occurs. In the example below the speakers are choosing paintings to decorate their
offices (as far as I can tell). The second speaker uses the too to highlight that she
also would find the picture they are currently examining difficult to look at because
her eyes would go out of focus, just as Speaker C has commented the theme is the
painting unfocusing someone and the focus is Speaker A in the triggering
expression and Speaker C in the antecedental expression. Note that both linguistic
expressions share an argument, the that referred to by Speaker C is the same
painting that is anaphorically referred to by the it in Speaker A’s statement. Note
also that the utterance where the presupposition triggered by too is made, is clearly a
response to the comment made by Speaker C, where the antecedent was found,
and certainly helps support an interpretation that this utterance is where the
antecedent information derived from.
(10) too, triggered p: (this picture) would unfocus someone else besides Speaker A
(1-8 671)
Speaker C It might be astigmatism, but I, I dislike lines which make my eyes
go out of focus and I go out of focus very badly on that.
Speaker A Yes, I know what you mean, yes, it would unfocus me too. No, I
wouldn’t be able to have that.
Speaker C It actually makes me feel rather nervous, you know.
As seen by the frequency data almost every example with too could be bound with
something in the context, though the strength of the perceived relationship and the
clarity of this relationship differs. This may have something to do with what too
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