Abstract

There are three ways to refer to a fact from the complement of afactive verb: (1) Via abstract object anaphoric reference, or, witha full sentential complement that will be interpreted either (2) asa bound presupposition or (3) as triggering a presupposition of afact that will have to be accommodated. Spoken corpus examplesreveal that these three possibilities differ in relation to thetype of information they tend to contribute, and this has twoeffects. First, the information status of the fact and its role inthe discourse seem to affect the preference for one constructionover another in a particular context. Second, presupposed factivecomplements that need to be accommodated tend to be hearer-new andthe focus of the utterance, meaning that information structureseems to contribute to the felicity of accommodation ofpresupposed facts.