Discourse Structure and the Structure of Context - Multiple Choices

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The dynamic theory which will serve as the formal background for the
present paper, Discourse Representation Theory (or DRT, for short),
goes further in emphasising the representational status of discourse
contexts. The discourse context for sentence Sk from the discourse is assumed to be identical with the semantic representation that
results from interpreting . This assumption of the identity
of discourse context and content representation has sometimes been
referred to as the ''unity of context and content'' 3 .
Even from the little that has been said here so far it should be clear that
a theory of natural language interpretation and meaning which
incorporates those aspects of context-dependence that are now
reasonably well understood mustz incorporate reference to both
utterance context and discourse context. (Think of any sentence which
contains both I and a third person pronoun referring to someone who
has been mentioned one sentence before.) But how can notions of
context as different as utterance context and discourse context be
incoroprated into a single notion of context, which allows us to account
for both kinds of context dependence in a cogent, unified way?
Especially the second difference between utterance context and
discourse context we noted, may well be seen as an obstacle.
However, the problem is not as forbidding as could have been thought.
In fact, a partial solution of sorts has been around within DRT almost
since its inception. Such a solution was urgently needed form the start
because of DRT's emphatic concern with the semantics of tense and
temporal adverbs, in which cross-sentential anaphora and indexicality
usually act in tandem. To mention just one example, the simple past
tense in simple sentences is indexical in that it locates the desribed
event or state in the past of the utterance time. But in non-initial
sentences event location also tends to have an anaphoric aspect insofar
The first sentences of (1.a) and (1.b) both state that Fred owns at least one car. but
the pronooun it in the second sentence is entirely felicitous in the case of (1.a). In
(1.b) the use of it is highly marked, and for some speakers not really acceptable.
3 For introductions to DRT see (Kamp, 1981), (Gamut, ??), (Kamp & Reyle, 1993),
(Blackburn & Bos, ??), (Van Genabith et al. 2004). Closely related to DRT qand dating
from roughly the same time is Heim's File Change Semantics, (Heim. 1982). (While
the two developments were independent, the first formulation of FCS antedates that of
DRT by roughly a year.) The original formulations of DRT and FCS make the same
predications, but FCS never took the representationsal stance which DRT adopted
from the beginning.