Factive Presuppositions, Accommodation and Information Structure

There are three ways to refer to a fact from the complement of a factive verb: 1) via abstract object anaphoric reference, or, with a full sentential complement that will be interpreted either 2) as a bound presupposition or 3) as triggering a presupposition of a fact that will have to be accommodated. Spoken corpus examples reveal that these three possibilities differ in relation to the type of information they tend to contribute, and this has two effects. First, the information status of the fact and its role in the discourse seem to affect the preference for one construction over another in a particular context. Second, presupposed factive complements that need to be accommodated tend to be hearer-new and the focus of the utterance, meaning that information structure seems to contribute to the felicity of accommodation of presupposed facts.