Reference resolution in multi-modal interaction: Preliminary observations

In this paper we present our research on multimodal interaction in and with virtual environments. The aim of this presentation is to emphasize the necessity to spend more research on reference resolution in multimodal contexts. In multi-modal interaction the human conversational partner can apply more than one modality in conveying his or her message to the environment in which a computer detects and interprets signals from different modalities. We show some naturally arising problems but do not give general solutions. Rather we decide to perform more detailed research on reference resolution in uni-modal contexts to obtain methods generalizable to multi-modal contexts. Since we try to build applications for a Dutch audience and since hardly any research has been done on reference resolution for Dutch, we give results on the resolution of anaphoric and deictic references in Dutch texts. We hope to be able to extend these results to our multimodal contexts later

Dependent Types for Pragmatics

This paper proposes the use of dependent types for pragmatic phenomena such as pronoun binding and presupposition resolution as a type-theoretic alternative to formalisms such as Discourse Representation Theory and Dynamic Semantics.Comment: This version updates the paper for publication in LEU

Donkeys under Discussion

Donkey sentences have existential and universal readings, but they are not often perceived as ambiguous. We extend the pragmatic theory of nonmaximality in plural definites by Križ (2016) to explain how context disambiguates donkey sentences. We propose that the denotations of such sentences produce truth-value gaps — in certain scenarios the sentences are neither true nor false — and demonstrate that Križ’s pragmatic theory fills these gaps to generate the standard judgments of the literature. Building on Muskens’s (1996) Compositional Discourse Representation Theory and on ideas from supervaluation semantics, the semantic analysis defines a general schema for quantification that delivers the required truth-value gaps. Given the independently motivated pragmatic theory of Križ 2016, we argue that mixed readings of donkey sentences require neither plural information states, contra Brasoveanu 2008, 2010, nor error states, contra Champollion 2016, nor singular donkey pronouns with plural referents, contra Krifka 1996, Yoon 1996. We also show that the pragmatic account improves over alternatives like Kanazawa 1994 that attribute the readings of donkey sentences to the monotonicity properties of the embedding quantifier

'Now' with Subordinate Clauses

We investigate a novel use of the English temporal modifier ‘now’, in which it combines with a subordinate clause. We argue for a univocal treatment of the expression, on which the subordinating use is taken as basic and the non-subordinating uses are derived. We start by surveying central features of the latter uses which have been discussed in previous work, before introducing key observations regarding the subordinating use of ‘now’ and its relation to deictic and anaphoric uses. All of these data, it is argued, can be accounted for on our proposed analysis. We conclude by comparing ‘now’ to a range of other expressions which exhibit similar behavior

Spanish null complement anaphora at the grammar-discourse interface

El estudio de la anáfora de complemento nulo (null complement anaphora, NCA, en inglés) es relevante en el estudio de la interfaz gramática-discurso, dado que parece materializar algunos de los procesos centrales otros fenómenos como por ejemplo la referencia, la anáfora, la elipsis, la inferencia, la prominencia o la acomodación. A pesar de que la NCA hasido estudiada en cantidad suficiente, todavía está vivo el debate sobre si se trata de un proceso de elipsis o anafórico. Este artículo contribuye a la consideración de la NCA como una anáfora profunda a partir de evidencias discursivas en español. Defendemos que la NCA es una anáfora que selecciona el antecedente más prominente en estructuras discursivas jerárquicas muy definidas. Nuestro análisis se basa, principalmente, en la comparación entre los pronombres neutros y la NCA en español, y en la similitud del comportamiento manifestado por la NCA y los pronombres en condiciones de inserción discursiva. Revisamos explicaciones anteriores de la NCA (Depiante 2000, 2001; Williamson 2012), y tratamos de aplicar a la NCA en español una propuesta de análisis de la elipsis de SV basada en relaciones discursivas (Hardt & Romero 2004)