Active Logic and Heim's Rules for Updating Discourse Context
Active Logic and Heim's Rules for Updating Discourse Context
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Date
1998-10-15
Authors
Gurney, John
Perlis, Don
Purang, Khemdut
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Abstract
Discourse unfolds in time, giving rise to a cascade of belief changes
in the listener. Yet this temporal evolution of discourse and belief
is typically ignored in theoretical treatments of discourse. It has
been claimed (see Soames~\cite{soames:presuppositions}) that
Heim's~\cite{heim:projection_problem} theory of discourse context
accounts for non-implicative discourse updating. We will present a new
non-implicative discourse that cannot be accounted for with Heim's
use of global or local accommodation and which appears to require
attention to \emph{evolution} of discourse. We use this example to
motivate remaking Heim's update function, aimed toward a unified
approach to discourse---one in which Heim's rules for discourse
updating can account for more of the problem cases for the theory of
discourse context. These rules and the revised update function can
then serve as principles that constrain the building of
representations for discourse context (such as the Discourse
Representation Structures, of Discourse Representation Theory,
~\cite{kamp:reyle}). We propose \emph{active logic} as a convenient
tool for executing the required inferences (as called for by our
revised version of Heim's update function) as the discourse evolves
through time.
(Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-96-43)