Presuppositions, affordances and the unfolding of conversations

This paper explores the intersection of semantic presuppositions and affordances, with a particular focus on how technological changes reshape the common ground in conversations. By analyzing examples of conversational oddities, the paper illustrates how the conditions for felicitous speech acts extend beyond linguistic structures into the social environment. The paper then investigates how changing technologies, like the shift from landlines to cell phones, alter the informational landscape of conversations. Drawing on examples from the C-ORAL-BRASIL corpus, it demonstrates how these changes impact the initial information available to interlocutors, influencing conversational appropriateness. Finally, the paper proposes a theoretical link between the semantic vocabulary of presuppositions and the theory of affordances, arguing that both constrain conversational and joint actions by shaping what is taken for granted in specific contexts. One consequence of this view is that Stalnaker’s account of presuppositions as beliefs is insufficient to capture everything that is taken for granted in the structure of a conversation. The paper offers a richer understanding of how conversations unfold in response to diverse informational constraints.