Discourse referents 论文

摘要

this paper I intend to discuss one particutar feature a text interpreter must have: that it must be abte to recognize when a novel individuat is mentioned in the input text and to store it atong with its characterization for fLCUre reference. Off course tn some cases the probtem is triv[at. Suppose there appears in some sentence a proper name that has not been mentioned previously. This means that a new -2- person is being introduced in the text and appropriate action must be taken to record the name of the person and what is said about him, Othewise the proper name is used to rfer to an individual already mentioned and the machine has to locate his file in the memory with the help of the name, This problem of identification will be more difficult where a definite description--a definite noun phrase subh as the man Bill saw yesterday--is used s since there will s in general s not be any simple look-up procedure for associating the description with the right individual, With definite noun phrases there is also the problem that' it is not possible to tell just frem the noun phrase itself whether or not it is supposed to refer to an individual at all. For example s it is clear that the phrase the best student is not used referentially in a sentence such as Bill is the best student. 7-here are thus two poblems with ordinary definite noun phrases: (i) Is it a definite description at all? and (ii) How to match a definite description with an individual already mentioned in the text? The first question is clearly of the kind linguists can be expected to solve s but it will not be discussed here. The only aspect of definite descriptions that interests, us here is the fact that they carry an existential presupposition: to call something "the ..." presuppo...