A multidimensional dynamic framework for handling simple interruption phenomena, anaphoric pronouns and definite descriptions
José Carlos Loureiro Ralha · White Rose eTheses Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) · 1998
The last two decades have witnessed the development of theories dealing with discourse. Contributions from Linguistics, Philosophy, and Logics have helped to expand the knowledge of the field. But, independently of the researchers' viewpoint, all theories make the same basic claim, namely: discourse is a complex structured abstract entity. If a theory is to succeed it must take into account such structure. Therefore, questions such as "What structures do discourses have?", "How many structure sorts can be assigned to discourses?", "Can discourse structure sorts be unified?", and the like, must be be asked (and answered). This thesis proposes a formal semantical model as an answer to the first question. This is not a work in Linguistics; it, however, is based on a series of well established results from Linguistics research. For instance, it presupposes that discourses can be hierarchically organized having discourse segments, or discourse blocks, as their basic components....