1 Motivations 1
1.1 What This Book is,and is Not,About 1
1.2 Motivating Rhetorical Relations 6
1.2.1 Temporal Structure 6
1.2.2 Anaphora and VP Ellipsis 8
1.2.3 Bridging 18
1.2.4 Presuppositions 23
1.2.5 Lexical Ambiguity 26
1.2.6 Implicature in Dialogue 28
1.3 Rhetorical Relations in Corpora 32
1.4 Conclusions 35
2 Semantic Models of Discourse Interpretation 39
2.1 Introduction 39
2.2 Dynamic Semantics 39
2.3 DRSs:Syntax and Semantics 45
2.3.1 A Basic Fragment 46
2.3.2 The Semantics of DRSs 47
2.3.3 Questions 49
2.3.4 Requests 51
2.4 Construction and Underspecification 54
2.5 Why Dynamic Semantics is Not Enough 60
2.5.1 Anaphora 60
2.5.2 Temporal Anaphora 62
2.5.3 Presuppositions 63
2.6 Conclusion 67
3 Pragmatic Models of Discourse Interpretation 69
3.1 Introduction 69
3.2 Traditional Theories of Pragmatics 71
3.2.1 Relevance Theory 75
3.2.2 Against The Belief Change Model of Discourse Content 76
3.2.3 Two Logics:The Logic of Information Content and the Logic of Information Packaging 78
3.3 Cognitive Approaches to Discourse Interpretation 81
3.3.1 Plan Recognition and Discourse Structure 82
3.3.2 Interpretation as Abduction 90
3.4 Other Theories that Use Rhetorical Relations 102
3.5 Empirical Approaches to Discourse Interpretation 105
3.6 Some Concluding Remarks 108
4 The Logical Form of Discourse 111
4.1 Introduction 111
4.2 Underspecification and Pragmatic Supplementation 113
4.3 Underspecified Logical Forms for Clauses 116
4.3.1 Other Sources of Underspecification 123
4.3.2 The Syntax of ULFs 125
4.3.3 The Interpretation of ULFs 129
4.4 The Syntax of the Discourse Language 135
4.4.1 A General Approach to Syntax 137
4.5 A Language for Describing Logical Forms 141
4.6 The VocabuIary of Discourse Relations 145
4.7 Hierarchical Structure and Availability 146
4.8 The Logic of Information Content 155
4.8.1 Elaboration and Explanation 159
4.8.2 Narration:A Case for Scalar Coherence 162
4.8.3 Background 165
4.8.4 Parallel and Contrast 168
4.8.5 Macrostructure Meets Microstructure 169
4.9 Unpacking the Truth Conditions:An Example 171
4.10 Introducing Holes into Discourse Structures 173
4.11 Conclusion 177
5 Building Logical Forms for Discourse 179
5.1 Introduction 179
5.2 Filling in Holes 180
5.2.1 The Need for Nonmonotonic Inference 181
5.2.2 The Logic:Some Preliminary Remarks 183
5.3 The Glue Language 184
5.4 Some Formal Details 186
5.4.1 Syntax 186
5.4.2 Semantics 188
5.4.3 The Logic:Brief Overview 189
5.4.4 The Logic:Some Formal Details 192
5.5 Transferring Information into the Glue Language 194
5.6 Some Default Rules for Inferring Discourse Relations 199
5.6.1 Narration 199
5.6.2 Explanation,Elaboration and Result 204
5.6.3 Background 207
5.6.4 Parallel and Contrast 208
5.7 Inferring Discourse Relations:Some Examples 209
5.8 Putting the Pieces together:SDRS Update 212
5.9 Working Through a Bigger Example 223
5.10 Formulating Maximal Discourse Coherence 230
5.10.1 Some Applications of MDC 235
5.11 Interpreting Presuppositions 238
5.12 Conclusions 246
6 The Lexicon and Discourse Structure 249
6.1 Introduction 249
6.2 What is in the Lexicon? 250
6.3 Lexical Semantics in Review 253
6.3.1 Inheritance Structure 254
6.3.2 Argument and Event Structure 264
6.4 Lexical Information to Discourse Structure 273
6.4.1 Cases where Rhetorical Connections are Lexically Specified 273
6.4.2 Defeasible Inferences from Lexical Information 279
6.4.3 Exploiting Information about Subtypes in the Lexicon 282
6.4.4 Subcategorisation Frames and Discourse Structure 283
6.5 From Discourse Structure to Lexical Interpretation 288
6.6 Conclusion 291
7 Discourse Relations for Dialogue 293
7.1 Introduction 293
7.2 Why Dialogue and Monologue are Similar 293
7.2.1 Availability in Dialogue 293
7.2.2 Rhetorical Relations in Monologue and Dialogue 296
7.3 Some Differences Between Monologue and Dialogue 298
7.3.1 An SDRS for Each Agent? 298
7.3.2 Cognitive Constraints on Anaphora 301
7.4 SDRT and Speech Acts 304
7.4.1 Indirect Speech Acts 307
7.5 Technical Details of SDRT for Dialogue 311
7.6 Simple Relations for Dialogue 313
7.6.1 Indirect Question Answer Pairs 313
7.6.2 Question Elaboration and Other Relations Involving Plans 320
7.6.3 Question Coordination 329
7.6.4 Other Relations Involving Questions 331
7.6.5 Metatalk Relations 333
7.6.6 Other Relations Involving Requests 336
7.7 Conclusions 341
8 Disputes in Dialogue 343
8.1 Introduction 343
8.2 Some Motivating Examples 343
8.3 Correction:The Analysis of one Divergent Relation 345
8.3.1 Some Formal Details 350
8.4 Settledness 361
8.5 An Analysis of an Extended Example 368
8.6 Conclusion 373
9 Cognitive Modelling 375
9.1 Introduction 375
9.2 Cognitive Modelling for Discourse Interpretation 376
9.2.1 The Rich Logic of Attitudes 378
9.2.2 The Shallow Language 379
9.2.3 The Syntax and Semantics of the Language 385
9.2.4 Axioms of Rationality and Cooperativity 390
9.2.5 Deriving Cognitive Modelling Axioms 401
9.3 From Cognitive Models to Discourse Structure 403
9.3.1 Responses to Questions 403
9.3.2 Some Examples 405
9.3.3 The Rhetorical Role of Questions 406
9.3.4 Some More Examples 409
9.3.5 Indicatives that Elaborate Plans 410
9.3.6 Inferring the Unexpected 412
9.3.7 Imperatives in Dialogue 413
9.4 Axioms for Discourse Relations Based on Structure 415
9.5 Applications 416
9.5.1 Cognitive Coordination 416
9.5.2 Calculating Implicatures 418
9.6 More Implicatures:Turn taking 427
9.7 Conclusions 427
10 Some Concluding Remarks 429
10.1 What We've Done 429
10.2 The Dynamic Logic of Information Content 432
10.3 Semantic Underspecification 435
10.4 Discourse Update 436
10.5 The Logic of the Lexicon 438
10.6 The Logic of Cognitive Modelling 440
10.7 Comparison with Other Theories 441
10.8 Where We Go From Here 442
A Objections and Replies 445
A.1 Introduction 445
A.2 Questions of Detail 445
A.2.1 Is the Glue Logic too Complex? 445
A.2.2 Representationalism 446
A.2.3 Empirical Difficulties:Generalisability and Falsifiability 447
A.3 Questions of Principle 447
A.3.1 Can Discourse Structure be Eliminated? 448
A.3.2 Cognitive Foundations of Rhetorical relations 450
B Notation Index 453
B.1 Information Content:Object Language 453
B.2 Information Content:Metalanguage 454
B.3 Underspecified Information Content:The Language Lulf 454
B.4 Underspecified Information Content:Metalanguage 454
B.5 Glue Logic:Object Language 455
B.6 Glue Logic:Metalanguage 455
B.7 Discourse Update 456
B.8 Cognitive Modelling Language 456
C The Semantics of DRT 457
D Glossary of Discourse Relations 459
D.1 Introduction 459
D.2 Content-Level Relations 459
D.2.1 Content-Level Relations for Indicatives 460
D.2.2 Content-Level Relations Involving Interrogatives 463
D.2.3 Content-Level Relations Involving Imperatives 464
D.3 Text Structuring Relations 465
D.4 Cognitive-Level Discourse Relations 466
D.5 Divergent Relations 469
D.6 Metatalk Relations 470
E Summary of Discourse Update 473
E.1 Summary of the Glue Logic Axioms 473
E.2 Discourse Update Definitions 475
F Some Proofs in the Glue Logic 479
F.1 The Specificity Principle 479
F.2 An Example Involving Specificity 479
References 481
Index 506
Citation Index 521
1.1 A diagram representing the discourse structure of discourse(7) 9
1.2 The discourse structure for After You.No,After You.Ouch,from The New York Times Week in Review Section,November 29th,1988 36
2.1 Kamp and Reyle's(1993)construction rule for translating pronouns to logical form 55
3.1 Abduction and Deduction for Proving the Logical form of(20).The part that's assumed is shown in a box,and arrows indicate deduction from the premises that were known before the sentence was uttered 94
4.1 The logical forms of(1)shown as trees 117
4.2 A Graphical Representation of the ULF of(1) 121
4.3 The SDRS(17)in DRT-style Notation 140
4.4 The fully-specified description of the logical form(19π2) 143
4.5 The SDRS(17),represented as a graph 147
4.6 Semantic Representation of(25a) 153
4.7 Semantic Representation of(25b) 153
4.8 The Logical form of(28a) 160
4.9 An example SDRS 171
5.1 A Graphical Representation of(8b) 194
5.2 An SDRS showing the topic structure for Narration 227
5.3 A Graphical Representation of the SDRS for(25) 230
5.4 The compositional semantics of the clauses in(41a)and(41b) 240
5.5 The Logical Form of(41a) 242
5.6 The Logical form of(41b) 243
6.1 The Lexical Entry for the Transitive Verb bake 257
6.2 A Simple Example of Inheritance 258
8.1 A dialogue from the Toulouse-Stuttgart Procope Corpus 369
10.1 The logics that contribute to discourse interpretation 431