Presuppositions in Spoken Discourse

Chapter 4
and its elements. The use of the anaphoric expression, and the pronouns ability to
be unambiguously resolved in such cases is taken to be evidence that the
interpreters are able to access this earlier context after the intervening topic,
thereby, using the terminology from Grosz & Sidner (1986), ‘popping’ a focus stack
of the intervening topics to return to the earlier context. These types of examples
have later been used to argue that discourse structure is hierarchical, a claim we’ll
look at more closely in 4.4.
In the above example, the topic is able Little making frames. Another topic
is pursued, and then finally the discussion about Little and frames is returned to,
and Little is the antecedent for the pronoun he. Fox (1987) identifies the repetition
of several words and phrases from the first mention of Little as helping the
interpreter to retrieve Little as the antecedent for the he in the later discourse. She
writes: “The lexical repetition helps to accomplish a return pop to a specific point
in the preceding talk, and this return pop allows the use of a pronoun to be
unambiguous”(p. 53). She also gives examples where there does not have to be
exact repetition but there can be similarity of meaning, on example from her data is
“and that made me feel good” and he made me feel better anyway (Fox 1987, p. 52).
Relevant to the discussion of example (22) is that long distance anaphors
often occur with lexical repetition of words and phrases from the last mention of
the antecedent. Example (22) shows the same type of lexical repetition with an
abstract presupposition and a potential antecedent that is quite a distance away
from the presuppositional expression. Thus, speaker produce long-distance
relationships between presuppositions and their antecedents in a way similar to the
use of long-distance anaphors. The crucial difference between examples with
anaphors and examples with presupposition however is that we cannot distinguish
well in (22) between an interpretation where binding is the method of resolution
and an interpretation where accommodation is the method of resolution because
there is no clear intuitive semantic difference. There is also no clear rhetorical
reason to perceive the relationship. Nevertheless, the data from the repetition,
particularly in that it is almost word for word and is not made by the speaker
triggering the presupposition, is evidence to believe that it is perceived as an
anaphoric relationship by Speaker A. 12
I think this example also supports the idea that even if the semantic effect of
binding a presuppositional anaphor is difficult to distinguish from accommodating
the presupposition, we should not be ambivalent about these two categories – we
should try to bind. If the goal is to develop an analysis that leads to the
representation of presupposed information in a way that accurately reflects the
relationships that speakers intend to be recognized, and the relationships that
hearers seems to react to or perceive, then we should prefer to resolve by binding
rather than accommodation in these borderline cases.
12 There is an alternative explanation, though I think it is unlikely. It could be that Speaker S’s
standard response to any mention of Prof. Pitt and Speaker B is to utter something about “He
has supported you quite strongly.” I don’t find this as plausible as the explanation given above.
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