The interplay of content and context is observable in a moment to moment manner as propositional content unfolds. The current contribution illustrates this through data from real-time language comprehension indicating that propositional content is not computed in isolation but relies in important ways on context during every step of the computation of meaning. The relevant notion of context that we have to adopt includes all aspects of possible worlds and draws on a variety of knowledge representations, which in a first (...) processing phase serve to generate expectations for upcoming words. In a second phase, the discourse representation is assessed and if necessary updated by means of inferential reasoning and enrichment to reflect the speaker’s intended meaning. (shrink)

In this paper, we claim that the disambiguation ofreferring expressions in discourse can be formulated in terms automatedreasoners can address. Specifically, we show that consistency,informativity and minimality are criteria which (i) can be implementedusing automated reasoning tools and (ii) can be used to disambiguatenoun-noun compounds, metonymy and definite descriptions.

Paradigmatic uses of negative existentials such as ‘Vulcan does not exist’ are problematic because they present the interpreter with a pragmatic paradox: a speaker who uses such a sentence seems to be asserting something that is incompatible with what she presupposes. An adequate solution must therefore explain why we interpret paradigmatic uses of negative existentials as saying something true, even though such uses present us with a pragmatic paradox. I provide such an explanation by analyzing paradigmatic uses of negative existentials (...) as corrections of previous assertions that are judged to suffer from referential presupposition failure. I present the explanation within the framework of a simple version of segmented discourse representation theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that an important component of the language-ready brain is the ability to recognize and conceptualize events. By ‘event’, I mean any situation or activity in the world or our mental life, that we find salient enough to individuate as a thought or word. While this may sound either trivial or non-unique to humans, I hope to show that abstracting away events and their participants from the embodied flow of experience is a characteristic unique to humans. (...) This ability is enabled, I will argue, by two critical competencies that act as scaffolds for language-ready thought in the prehuman brain. The first, as argued by Arbib (2006,2012,2016) and others, is a sophisticated system of gesture production and understanding in prehumans, which provided a template for schema-like sequencing and slot-filling of information units. The second involves the integration of multiple modalities of expression in the communicative act, in particular, the alignment of co-gestural speech and co-speech gesture. With such computational facilities, action-based gestures can be abstracted away from their associated objects and become full event representations. This view supports the MSH argument for the emergence of more complex linguistic expressions from initially holophrastic units. In particular, actions can be thought of as protoverbs, which through this process are abstracted to full event descriptions, i.e., verbs. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to revisit the phenomenon of bridging anaphora Thinking: readings in cognitive science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 411–420, 1977) from the perspective of the German demonstrative plural pronoun die ‘they’. I argue that antecedentless die ‘they’ can be analyzed as a novel definite that is licensed by a suitable, contextually given situation and denotes the salient person who stand in a contextually given relation to that situation. Subsequently, I propose a formal semantic implementation of (...) my analysis in terms of Elbourne, analyzing the antecedentless demonstrative pronoun die ‘they’ as a definite description in disguise. (shrink)

Strawson :96–118, 1964) argued that definite NPs trigger presuppositions as an aspect of their conventional meanings, and this semantic conception of presupposition triggers is incorporated into the binding theory of presuppositions. The phenomenon of presupposition denials, however, presents a problem for the semantic conception of presupposition triggers, for in such denials the alleged semantic presuppositions seem to be “cancelled” by a negation operator. Geurts :274–307, 1998; Presupposition and pronouns, 1999) attempts to solve this problem by utilizing the binding theory’s allowance (...) for local accommodation. Geurts’ proposal, however, is inadequate, primarily because Geurts formulates the binding theory within discourse representation theory, which makes no allowance for the illocutionary force of denial. Asher and Lascarides’ segmented discourse representation theory, however, has the resources to account for the illocutionary force of denial. Utilizing a version of SDRT I demonstrate that the “cancelling” of a presupposition by echoic negation in presupposition denials crucially depends upon the denial of information that is pragmatically communicated by accommodation. (shrink)

By force of _causes precede effects_, causality contributes to the temporal meaning of discourse. In case of semantic causal relations, this contribution is straightforward, but in case of epistemic causal relations, it is not. In order to gain insight into the semantics of epistemic causal relations, paradoxical cases are analyzed of text fragments in which temporal and causal meaning seem to be irreconcilable. A solution is proposed consisting of several parts: First, an analysis of epistemic causal coherence relations, in which (...) the effect sentence is argued to be a _belief_ sentence. Secondly, a method for deriving causal coherence relations. And thirdly, a format for representing temporal meaning in which contributions of tense and causality can be reconciled. Finally, it is argued that _understanding_ epistemically causally connected sequences is not equal to being persuaded to _believing_ them. The difference is shown to be expressible in the representation format proposed. (shrink)

In this paper an approach to the exhaustive interpretation of answers is developed. It builds on a proposal brought forward by Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984). We will use the close connection between their approach and McCarthy's (1980, 1986) predicate circumscription and describe exhaustive interpretation as an instance of interpretation in minimal models, well-known from work on counterfactuals (see for instance Lewis (1973)). It is shown that by combining this approach with independent developments in semantics/pragmatics one can overcome certain limitations of (...) Groenenedijk and Stokhof's (1984) proposal. In the last part of the paper we will provide a Gricean motivation for exhaustive interpretation building on work of Schulz (to appear) and van Rooij and Schulz (2004). (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a novel analysis of presuppositions, paying particular attention to the interaction between the knowledge resources that are required to The analysis has two main features. First, we capture an analogy between presuppositions, anaphora and scope ambiguity (cf. van der Sandt 1992), by utilizing semantic under-specification (c£ Reyle 1993). Second, resolving this underspecification requires reasoning about how the presupposition is rhetorically connected to the discourse context. This has several consequences. First, since pragmatic information plays a role (...) in computing the rhetorical relation, it also constrains the interpretation of presuppositions. Our account therefore provides a formal framework for analysing problematic data, which require pragmatic reasoning. Second, binding presuppositions to the context via rhetorical links replaces accommodating them, in the sense of adding them to the context (cf. Lewis 1979). The treatment of presupposition is thus generalized and integrated into the discourse update procedure. We formalize this approach in SDRT (Asher 1993; Lascarides & Asher 1993), and demonstrate that it provides a rich framework for interpreting presuppositions, where semantic and pragmatic constraints are integrated. (shrink)

In this paper, we address several puzzles concerning speech acts, particularly indirect speech acts. We show how a formal semantictheory of discourse interpretation can be used to define speech acts and to avoid murky issues concerning the metaphysics of action. We provide a formally precise definition of indirect speech acts, including the subclass of so-called conventionalized indirect speech acts. This analysis draws heavily on parallels between phenomena at the speech act level and the lexical level. First, we argue that, just (...) as co-predication shows that some words can behave linguistically as if they're `simultaneously' of incompatible semantic types, certain speech acts behave this way too. Secondly, as Horn and Bayer (1984) and others have suggested, both the lexicon and speech acts are subject to a principle of blocking or "preemption by synonymy": Conventionalized indirect speech acts can block their `paraphrases' from being interpreted as indirect speech acts, even if this interpretation is calculable from Gricean-style principles. We provide a formal model of this blocking, and compare it with existing accounts of lexical blocking. (shrink)

Contrary to what seems to be predicted by a Strawson-inspired view, in presupposition denials the presupposition triggered by, e.g., ‘the king of France’ seems to be cancelled. To explain this puzzling instance of the projection problem, defenders of a Strawson-inspired view have proposed various ad hoc ambiguities. I develop a version of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory that explains the puzzling presupposition-cancelling phenomenon relying only on independently motivated pragmatic processes. Appealing to Kripke’s “test” for the adequacy of ambiguity motivating counterexamples, I (...) argue that my analysis is to be preferred over proposals that posit ad hoc ambiguities. Two key insights of my analysis are, first, that the “cancellation” of presuppositions in presupposition denials depends upon the illocutionary effects of rejection and correction, and, second, that the process of presupposition accommodation often involves the speaker performing an ancillary sort of speech act, viz. the speech act of presupposing. (shrink)