Corpus evidence for preference-driven interpretation ⋆

Abstract. We present the Cards corpus of task-oriented dialogues and show how it can inform study of the ways in which discourse is goaland preference-driven. We report on three experimental studies involving underspecified referential expressions and quantifier domain restriction.

Definite descriptions and negative existential quantifiers

Previous theorists have claimed that Russell’s theory of definite descriptions gives the wrong truth conditions to sentences in which definite descriptions are embedded under certain other operators; but the other operators used, such as conditionals and propositional attitude verbs, have introduced intensional and hyperintensional complications that might be thought to obscure the point against Russell. This paper shows that the same kind of problem arises when the operator in question (English ‘no’) allows the context to be extensional. It is further argued that presuppositional theories of definite descriptions give intuitively satisfying analyses of the novel data