[PhD dissertation, Rutgers
University - slightly reformatted & revised]
[committee: Maria Bittner (chairperson), Hans Kamp
(external member), Roger Schwarzschild and Matthew Stone]
Abstract.
The dissertation
argues that
discourse reference in natural language involves two equally important
components with essentially the same interpretive dynamics, namely
reference to
values, i.e. non-singleton sets of objects (individuals and possible
worlds),
and reference to structure, i.e. the correlation / dependency between
such
sets, which is introduced and incrementally elaborated upon in
discourse.
To define and investigate structured discourse reference, a new dynamic
system couched in classical (many-sorted) type logic is introduced
which
extends Compositional DRT (CDRT, Muskens 1996) with plural information
states,
i.e. information states are modeled as sets of variable assignments
(following
van den Berg 1996a), which can be can be represented as matrices with
assignments (sequences) as rows. A plural info state encodes both
values (the columns
of the matrix store sets of objects) and structure (each row of the
matrix
encodes a correlation / dependency between the objects stored in it).
Given the underlying type logic, compositionality at sub-clausal level
follows automatically and standard techniques from Montague semantics
(e.g.
type shifting) become available.
The idea that
plural info states are semantically necessary is
motivated by examples with morphologically singular anaphors, in
contrast to
the previous literature that argues for plural info states based on
plural
anaphora. Plural Compositional DRT (PCDRT) enables us compositionally
account for
a variety of phenomena, including: (i) mixed weak &
strong donkey
anaphora, e.g. Every person who buys au
computer and has au' credit card uses itu'
to pay for itu,
(ii)
quantificational subordination, e.g. Harvey courts au
girl at everyu'
convention. Sheu alwaysu' comes to the banquet with
him
(Karttunen
1976), (iii)
modal anaphora and modal subordination, e.g. Au
wolf mightp
come
in. Itu wouldp eat Harvey first (based on Roberts
1989) and (iv)
naturally-occurring discourses exhibiting complex
interactions between modalized conditionals, donkey anaphora, modal
subordination and the entailment particle therefore,
e.g. [A]
man cannot live without joy.
Therefore, when he is deprived of true spiritual joys, it is necessary
that he
become addicted to carnal pleasures (Thomas Aquinas).
The
PCDRT account of these phenomena explicitly and systematically captures
the anaphoric and quantificational parallels between the individual and
modal domains.