Versatility of 'Continuations' in Discourse Semantics

• Autorzy: Dinu A.
• Języki publikacji: EN

Abstrakty

EN

We show in this paper how the computer science concept of ’continuations’, togetherwith categorial grammars and a type shiftingmechanism, is able to account for a wide range of natural language semantic phenomena, such as hierarchical discourse structure, ellipses, accommodation and free-focus and bound-focus anaphora. The merit of continuations in the dynamic semantics framework is that they abstract away from assignment functions that are essential to the formulations of Dynamic Intensional Logic, DynamicMontague Grammar, Dynamic Predicate Logic and Discourse Representation Theory, Thus, continuation style semantic do not pose problems such as the destructive assignment problem in Dynamic Predicate Logic or the variable clash problem in Discourse Representation Theory. We argue that continuations are a versatile and powerful tool, particularly well suited to manipulate scope and long distance dependencies, phenomena that abound in natural language semantics.

Słowa kluczowe

EN

continuations; dynamic semantics; lambda calculus; type shifting; scope; anaphora

• Wydawca: IOS Press
• Czasopismo: Fundamenta Informaticae
• Rocznik: 2011
• Tom: Vol. 112, nr 4
• Strony: 263--280
• Opis fizyczny: Bibliogr. 23 poz.

Twórcy

autor

Dinu A.

• University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, Str. Edgar Quinet 5-7, Bucharest, Romania,

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