(71)
a. Put your coat in the bathroom. It's
wet.
[S 2 is reason for (saying) S 1 ]
(note*Put your coat in the bathroom, and
it's wet)
b. Why should I have to do that? I'm
an old man.
[S 2 is reason for (saying) S 1 ]
(note*Why should I have to do that and
I'm an old man]Since there is no lexical or structural expression of the connection between the sentences, it is left for the hearer to
figureout theconnectionongeneral grounds ofplausibility. Thusthespecificationoftheconnectionis a classiccaseof
enriched composition, now at the multi-sentential scale.
Two important questions are posed by Asher (2001) regarding these intuitions. First, is there a limited repertoire of
connections fro mwhich hearers can select? Second, what se mantic factors in S 1 and S 2 lead hearers to select one
connection rather than another? We can add to these questions a third: How do language users learn to do this?
Interestingly, these questions preciselyparallelthequestions weasked in section 8.7 about compounds likedoghouseand
armchair, in which the range of semantic connections possible between the two nouns is a complex function of the
nouns' meanings. This is a point where grammar fades out and we are dealing purely with conceptual structure. But,
given that the phenomena arise from language use, it certainly falls to linguists to investigate them.
When we move to discourses longer than two sentences, the problems multiply. For instance, Herbert Clark (1996)
suggests that conversations have a sort of embedding structure. Consider the following conversation, which Clark
(343) quotes fro mMerritt (1984: 140). C is a custo mer and S a salesperson.
(72) a.C: Hi, do you have uh size Cflashlight batteries?
b. S: Yes sir.
c. C: I'll have four please.
d. S: Do you want the long life or the regular?
e. See the long life doesn't last ten times longer than the regular battery.
f. Usually last three times as long....
g. C: Guess I better settle for the short life.
h. S: How many you want?
i. C: Four please.
j. S: Okay. That's a dollar forty and nine tax, a dollar forty-nine.The indenting in (72) reflects Clark's analysis of the embedding. After hearing (72c), the salesperson realizes she needs
more information and in (72d) begins a