Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 4
Speaker B Really awful, I it was nothing, it was nothing, I said I didn‘t say anything
.
Speaker c Oh God.
Speaker B So anyway . by the time she‘d finished sort of telling me off and me
saying, now what‘s the good of quarrelling, it‘s so trivial and…
In the above example, an abstract object pronoun or even an ellipse could have
been used, to read “by the time she’d finished that/ ∅” but the rhetorical effect
would be lost, and the additional descriptive information that the presupposition
contributes to the understanding of the speakers perception of what the
“harangue” really was would be lost.
All of the presuppositional expressions of this type could be replaced with a
pronominal expression. This wouldn’t cause a loss of meaning, but it would cause a
loss of rhetorical effect. These examples the presupposed information can be
replaced with an abstract object anaphor is because the predicated information
about the antecedent is so similar to the predicated information about the triggered
presupposition. This makes the relationship unambiguously identifiable, even when
an anaphoric expression is used. But a pronominal alternative cannot contribute
rhetorical effects like presuppositions can.
The examples in the following section are different in that the
presuppositional expression could not be replaced with a pronominal anaphor.
However, it still seems to be bound. In the first example the reactions of the other
participants are taken as clues to binding. In the second example understanding a
relationship is necessary for perceiving the discourse as coherent.
4.3.3 Reactions by other participants point to the binding relationship being
perceived
In the following example the presupposed material does not express exactly the
same semantic content as the potential antecedent, similar to the examples in the
previous section. Because of this, it is not clear what the truth-conditional
difference will be between a binding resolution and a resolution via
accommodation. But this example differs from the preceding ones in that the
presupposition cannot be replaced with a pronoun and part of the reason for this is
that the potential antecedent is quite far from the triggering expression. The
distance probably also contributes to the difficulty in perceiving what difference
resolution by binding and resolution by accommodation would make. Finally, there
was no clear rhetorical effect that encourages us to recognize a binding
relationship. However, there is evidence that the hearer did perceive a binding
relationship:
(22) factive, triggered p: "He is enthusiastic (He = Prof. Pitt)" (2-1@ 120)
Speaker A: Also Pitt has talked about it a good deal. Professor Pitt here, and he has
supported. (a)
(SEVERAL LINES) Yes, he has supported you (b)
is it with the Cambridge Press.
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