Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Anaphors and Bound Presuppositions
(13) Abstract object anaphor: Same speaker, previous discourse segment, chain of
references (1-2a 1014)
Speaker A: [@] It‘s, it‘s* [dhi dhi] faculty in the school *-* {that that
puts you forward}#|
Speaker B: *Oh no they don‘t {of course}, do they . No, no they
don‘t -, *.
Speaker A: You see.
Speaker B: *[m]*
Speaker A: So that it‘s the faculty of arts, or the faculty of
economics or both that‘ll be putting him forward (a)
Speaker B: Mmm. (b)
But they can put it forward for any title that they like apparently.(c)
I didn‘t realize THIS. (d)
*1 to 2 sylls*. so this
Speaker A: No, I didn‘t know THAT. (e)
Here, and in the following, each turn, or alternatively each sentence in a turn that
makes up an informative utterance(s), and any acknowledgment phrases or
comments that shows that the material has been understood by other discourse
participants, i.e. that it has been grounded (see Traum 1996), will be treated as a
discourse segment. More than one participant can ground the same utterance(s) so
a discourse segment may be made up of utterances contributed by more than one
speaker. The utterance marked as line (a) is grounded by the utterance by Speaker B
in line (b), and together they make up a discourse segment. This definition of
discourse segment is closely based on the Eckert & Strube (2000) notions of
synchronizing units or SU’s, in that it takes grounding to be a central clue to local
discourse units.
In the example above it seems clear from the speaker‘s use of “No”, in “No,
I didn‘t know that,” that he is referring to Speaker B‘s last utterance, and not to the
entire informational content of several of Speaker B’s previous utterances. THIS in
(d) refers to an abstract object derived from the linguistic expression in discourse
segment (c). THAT in (e) refers to the same thing as THIS in (d), making it a chain
of abstract reference. It is also possible that THAT in (e) refers to a greater segment
than shown here, illustrating the problem of granularity in determining exactly how
much of the previously introduced information should be considered to be the
antecedent of the abstract object.
(14) abstract object anaphor: Overlapping speech, source of abstract object could
be synthesis of several utterances made by different speakers (2-5a 118)
Speaker C: University of the Air (a)
Speaker D: *That would be S* (b)
Speaker C: *Are doing a series* on various sorts of communication
which struck me immediately as **disparates** (c)
Speaker B: Disparates, surely? (d)
Speaker D: ** ** but it would be, um it would be non-
surreptitious wouldn‘t it ? (e)
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