Abstract: This work presents the Logical Description Grammar framework of discourse interpretation, and applies the model in the domain of anaphora resolution and presupposition theory. The purpose of the enterprise is to provide what might be called a common language for the specification of discourse theory. Much of current research in linguistics and discourse semantics focuses on highly specialised issues. Moreover, it employs a number of different formal representation systems, so that the analyses provided are sometimes hard to compare. Although it is unavoidable that alternative treatments of one and the same topic arise in a field of research where we may meet with uncertainties of various kinds, such a dispersion of linguistic findings need not be accepted. Even when we concentrate on details or isolated phenomena, linguistic theory is essentially a theory of the whole of a language user’s linguistic capabilities. Analyses of different topics must be combined so that they may help to evaluate and strengthen each other. The LDG framework of discourse interpretation is a flexible system which allows much freedom in setting the parameters of discourse theory. As such it may help to integrate and compare findings currently spread over different approaches or spelled out in different formal theories. Thus, a shared discourse theoretical perspective may be developed. The LDG framework is a reasoning system, the central component of which is a so-called Logical Description Grammar (LDG) for discourse. The grammar represents the language user’s linguistic knowledge. To obtain the full meaning of a discourse, however, linguistic knowledge is not enough. Language users employ world knowledge and knowledge of what is normally the case as well. They are able to infer a most plausible interpretation of a discourse, given their combined linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge.
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
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Cited By Count: 5
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