Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Attitude reports 151
(34) a. There is an A^ Ax who believes that there is a B By, , and hex he^. also
believes that she y
is a C.
b. [1 [j x, X, p, q, r: Ax, x believes p & q & r,
q = p+b p+[ 2 y:By],r r = q+[ b 3 :Cy]] : The indices in (34a) serve to indicate co-reference, as usual, but furthermore
the index on a noun phrase is a homograph of the reference marker which
represents that noun phrase in (34b); this convention (which is not part of the
theory) is meant to clarify the links between between NPs and their semantic
representations. In (34b), q is an extension of p, and q is extended by r: q
adds to p the information that there is a y such that By, and r adds to q the
information that Cy. And since x stands in the believes relation to p, q, and r,
he must believe that there is a y such that By and Cy.
(35) a. If an Ax r believes that there is a By, v , hex r also believes that she,,
~ y y
is a C.
b. [1 [j:: [ b 2 x, p, q: Ax, x believes p & q, q = p+[ p+b 3 y: By]] ::::::} =>
[4[ 4 r: x believes r, r = q+[s 5 : Cy]]]
The DRS in (35b) represents the content of (35a), and its intuitive
interpretation is the following. Let x be an arbitrary object such that Ax, and
suppose that x's doxastic context is correctly characterized by some p and q,
where q extends p with the information that there is a y such that By: then it
must be the case that there is an r which extends q with the information that
Cy such that x's doxastic context is correctly characterized by r.
Examples like (34) and (35) show that in the present version of DRT, a
DRS may contain identity conditions that affect the extension of the
accessibility relation. (34b 2 ) is accessible to (34b 3 ) only because the former
extends a prepositional propositional term, p, yielding a term q which in its turn is extended
by the latter; the same holds for (35b 3 ) and (35b s 5 ). However, in neither case
do we want to say that the main DRS is accessible to these embedded DRSs,
for the following reason. Saying that a DRS