An Underspecified Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (USDRT)
Frank Schilder · 1998
A theory of discourse interpretation has to deal with a set of problems including anaphora resolution and the hierarchical ordering of discourse structure: (1) Several students organised a dinner party for Peter. Some students wrote fancy invitation cards. Some other students bought exotic food. But Peter didn't like it. There are two conceivable readings for (1). Either (a) it refers to the party or (b) Peter only disliked the food. Discourse grammars like Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) offer an explanation for this phenomenon. SDRT --- an extension of DRT (Kamp and Reyle, 1993) --- describes a complex propositional structure of Discourse Representation Structures (DRSs) connected via discourse relations. The hierarchical ordering imposed by relations like narration or elaboration can be used to make predictions about possible attachment sites within the already pro