Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

38 Presuppositions and Pronouns
Although in the following I will always start out from sentence-sized
semantic representations, this is only because I want to focus on pragmatic
aspects of interpretation. But it will be clear that in reality semantic and
pragmatic processes are interleaved. In this respect the standard DRT model
is more realistic than the one adopted here, although I take it that the two-
twostage
model could be reformulated so as to allow the pragmatic processes to
follow the grammar at each step. However, unlike standard DRT, this
reformulated version would still make a clean distinction between linguistic
and pragmatic determinants of meaning. To give an example, Kamp and
Reyle (1983: 122) have a single rule for interpreting pronouns, which is
triggered whenever a parse tree contains a pronominal element. The rule
says that for each pronoun we must select a new reference marker, link it to
a suitable antecedent, and update the DRS so as to record these changes. In
my version of DRT there is no such rule. Its duties are divided between two
separate mechanisms. On the one hand, pronominallexemes lexemes introduce new
reference markers and mark them as anaphoric. On the other hand, there is
a completely general pragmatic mechanism for dealing with presuppositions,
which handles anaphoric reference markers, too. So the main difference
between my version of DRT and Kamp and Reyle's is that mine has a
separate pragmatic component which takes care of certain tasks that in the
Kamp and Reyle system are dealt with, whenever the need arises, by the
individual construction rules.
Thus far, we have only considered DRSs with simple conditions, but in
order to account for negated and conditional sentences, say, complex
conditions are required.
(5) a. Wilbur doesn't have a radio.
b. [j x: Wilbur x, ->[ 2 y: radio y, x owns y]]
b. h x: Wilbur x, 'b y: radio y, x owns y]]
(5b) is the sentence DRS corresponding to (5a). This DRS contains a
condition which consists of a DRS prefixed by a negation sign. It is
sometimes convenient to adorn DRSs with numerical labels, as I have done
in (5b), and refer to these labeled DRSs with names like '(5b '(5^)', 1
)" '(5b 2 )', and
so on. In general, labeling of DRSs will be top-down and left-to-right, so the
main (or principal) DRS will always be number one.
A function f / embeds (5b^ 1
) in a given model M iff f / maps x onto an
individual in M which 'is a Wilbur', i.e. which is called 'Wilbur', and/cannot f be extended to a function g which embeds (5b 2 ) -— that is to say, no such g
should map y onto a radio that Wilbur owns. Proper names are treated here
as ordinary definite NPs, which are accounted for by the theory of
presupposition. This treatment will be defended in Chapter 7.
(5b 2 ) contains a token of the reference marker x which is introduced
externally, in the DRS in which (5b 2 ) is embedded, i.e. (5b 1 ). Apart from
that, (5b 2 ) also introduces a reference marker of its own, i.e. y, which is