Semantic interpretation is not a simple process. When we want to know what a given
sentence means, more is needed than just a simple ‘adding up’ of the meanings of the
component words. Not only can the words in a sentence interact and conflict with each
other, but also with the linguistic and non-linguistic context in which the sentence was
uttered. Deictic, anaphoric, and elliptical expressions attune their interpretation to the
properties of the context, noun phrases have to be shifted in type to fit a particular
argument slot (Partee 1987), and lexical meanings may need to undergo coercion to
match the neighboring words (Pustejovsky 1995). Optimality-theory provides a
framework to deal with such conflicts in interpretation in a systematic way by means of
constraint-ranking (Prince and Smolensky 1993). In 2002, NWO, the Dutch Organization
for Scientific Research, funded a project proposal submitted by Petra Hendriks
(Groningen University), Helen de Hoop (University of Nijmegen) and the first author of
this paper (Utrecht University) as part of the Cognition Program.1 The starting point of
the project is the notion of conflicts in interpretation and their resolution by constraintranking.
This paper reports on the first results, and sketches the lines of research opening
up in this project. We illustrate with four examples: anaphora resolution, the polysemy of
the spatial preposition round, negative concord and the acquisition of indefinites
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