Abstract One of the biggest problems concerning presuppositions has been correctly dealing with their sensitivity to the context, . why inferences triggered by certain expressions do not project out in all linguistic environments, even though the triggering words preserve their semantic content in different settings. The answer which is of particular interest here goes along with the principles of the binding theory of presuppositions developed by van der Sandt (1992). | Available online at ScienceDirect journal of ELSEVIER Journal of Pragmatics 41 2009 721-737 locate pragma I know that women don t like me Presuppositions in therapeutic discourse Marta Andersson English Language Department Stockholm University Universtietsvdgen 10E 10691 Stockholm Sweden Received 23 March 2006 received in revised form 11 March 2008 accepted 25 September 2008 Abstract One of the biggest problems concerning presuppositions has been correctly dealing with their sensitivity to the context . why inferences triggered by certain expressions do not project out in all linguistic environments even though the triggering words preserve their semantic content in different settings. The answer which is of particular interest here goes along with the principles of the binding theory of presuppositions developed by van der Sandt 1992 . According to this theory presuppositions behave as anaphors and can be resolved in the same way at the level of discourse representation. This article contributes to a very scarce body of empirical work on presuppositions as it scrutinizes examples of presuppositions that act like discourse anaphors in the context of three psychotherapeutic sessions. Such sessions can be analyzed in the same way as ordinary spoken discourse however the initial premise that the usage of presuppositions differs in this genre in comparison to daily interaction is confirmed. The results of both quantitative and qualitative analysis indicate that presuppositions are used for different strategic reasons in the two genres compared which influences the way they should be interpreted and also their frequency. 2008 Elsevier . All rights reserved. Keywords Anaphors Accommodation Binding Presupposition Representation 1. Introduction The crux of van der Sandt s 1992 binding theory proposed as a solution to the projection problem of presuppositions discussed further is the idea that they can be handled using the same .
