Abstract
In this paper, we focus on two puzzles concerning anaphora in dialogue. On the basis of these puzzles we argue for three criteria for solving them: the representation of dialogue content must include rhetorical relations since they impose different constraints on the antecedents to anaphora; for discourse interpretation to be computable, it must be highly modular, for example the logic for discourse update and the logic for cognitive modelling must be separate; but these different modules must be allowed to interact in complex ways. We specify an account which meets these three criteria within Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT: Asher, 1993). We illustrate our approach by first using principles or rationality and cooperativity to derive principles for computing discourse content---in particular, the rhetorical connections between the propositions. We then exploit these cognitively-motivated but discourse-level axioms to account for the puzzles concerning anaphora.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the Amsterdam Dialogue Workshop, Amstelogue-99 |
| Pages | 1-12 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Publication status | Published - 1999 |