Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 4
collaborative evidenced we can look for to find plausible antecedents, is the subject
of the rest of the chapter.
4.3 IDENTIFYING ANTECEDENTS
In the earlier discussion on anaphora it was pointed out that depending on the type
of semantic object an anaphoric expression refers to, the relationship between an
anaphoric expression and its antecedent will differ, and the relationship these two
have with the discourse structure will differ as well. But regardless of the semantic
type, anaphoric expressions need an antecedent for their interpretation, and when
there is more than one compatible antecedent, the different interpretations we get
depending on the antecedent identified will have perceivably different effects on
the interpretation of the entire discourse. This is where anaphors distinguish
themselves from presuppositions.
Recognizing the antecedents of presuppositions is more difficult than for
anaphoric expressions for two reasons, 8 both stemming from the fact that
presuppositions are semantically more loaded than anaphors. First, looking for an
antecedent often involves the difficult task of comparing two different linguistic
expressions, often contributed by different speakers, and judging whether or not
the information they contribute refers to the same object in the context. This is not
always as straightforward as the examples given in section 4.2 make it seem – the
more difficult cases will be discussed in the rest of this chapter. Second,
presuppositions have the option of being interpreted via accommodation. In some
cases the difference in interpretation between binding and accommodation was not
readily apparent and this makes it necessary to justify the interpretation of the
presupposed material as bound by looking for additional grounds.
Both of these problems are present to different degrees depending on the
trigger type and the semantic type of the presupposition triggered. The
presupposition of a concrete individual needs to be bound to its antecedent if there
is one, but the case is less clear for the induced presuppositions of abstract objects.
This difference is illustrated most clearly by discussing the consequences of failing
to identify a given antecedent for presupposed material induced by the two main
trigger types, concrete and abstract presuppositions. If the antecedent of a definite
description is incorrectly identified or fails to be identified at all, a new discourse
individual has to be accommodated, radically changing the discourse representation
into one that has different truth-conditions. On the other hand, if we fail to identify
the antecedent for the information presupposed by an abstract trigger, such as a
factive, this abstract object can be accommodated, and the consequence of the
accommodation to the truth-conditional meaning of the discourse representation
will be difficult to pinpoint. For many abstract objects it is quite difficult to
determine if a linguistic expression about it is referring to the actual object, to a
part of it or a similar but different object if different linguistic expressions are used.
8 Some practical problems involved identifying antecedent of bound presupposition based on
surface characteristics was presented in Spenader (2000)
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