Event structure in natural language discourse
We present new observations on the distribution of sentence-final 'then'. We develop an analysis which reveals the need to distinguish between times which are explicitly mentioned and those which are merely implicit in the description of events. The account is expressed formally in DRT (Kamp and Reyle 1993), and involves restricting the introduction of temporal discourse referents to cases where an explicit temporal referent is present. We discuss possible problems with the DRT account in extending to larger fragments, and suggest that incorporating ideas from situation theory (Barwise and Perry 1983), along the lines of Cooper's situation-theoretic DRT (STDRT) (Cooper 1993a, 1993b) may overcome these problems. We present an alternative formalisation expressed in a version of Cooper's situation theoretic grammar (STG) (Cooper 1991). In this fragment, the distinction between explicit and implied temporal referents is made in terms of information about the utterance. Observations are made concerning 'at the time' and 'at the same time'. In order to develop an account, we look at related non-temporal observations, involving 'the X' and 'the same X' in discourse sequences, where X is a relational noun such as
Glasbey, Sheila R.
Event structure in natural language discourse. We present new observations on the distribution of sentence-final 'then'. We develop an analysis which reveals the need to distinguish between times which are explicitly mentioned and those which are merely implicit in the description of events. The account is expressed formally in DRT (Kamp and Reyle 1993), and involves restricting the introduction of temporal discourse referents to cases where an explicit temporal referent is present. We discuss possible problems with the DRT account in extending to larger fragments, and suggest that incorporating ideas from situation theory (Barwise and Perry 1983), along the lines of Cooper's situation-theoretic DRT (STDRT) (Cooper 1993a, 1993b) may overcome these problems. We present an alternative formalisation expressed in a version of Cooper's situation theoretic grammar (STG) (Cooper 1991). In this fragment, the distinction between explicit and implied temporal referents is made in terms of information about the utterance. Observations are made concerning 'at the time' and 'at the same time'. In order to develop an account, we look at related non-temporal observations, involving 'the X' and 'the same X' in discourse sequences, where X is a relational noun such as
event_structure natural_language discourse present_new observation distribution sentence final then develop analysis_reveals need distinguish time explicitly mention merely implicit description event account express formally involve restrict introduction temporal discourse referent case explicit temporal referent present discus possible problem account extend large fragment suggest incorporate idea situation theory along_line situation theoretic may overcome_problem present_alternative formalisation express version situation theoretic grammar fragment distinction explicit implied temporal referent make term information utterance make concern time time order develop_account look related non temporal observation involve the the discourse sequence relational noun