Temporal interpretation, discourse relations and commonsense entailment

Linguistics and Philosophy 16 (5):437 - 493 (1993)
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Abstract

This paper presents a formal account of how to determine the discourse relations between propositions introduced in a text, and the relations between the events they describe. The distinct natural interpretations of texts with similar syntax are explained in terms of defeasible rules. These characterise the effects of causal knowledge and knowledge of language use on interpretation. Patterns of defeasible entailment that are supported by the logic in which the theory is expressed are shown to underly temporal interpretation.

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2009-01-28

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Nicholas Asher
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Citations of this work

Tolerant, Classical, Strict.Pablo Cobreros, Paul Egré, David Ripley & Robert van Rooij - 2012 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 41 (2):347-385.
Relevance theory.Deirdre Wilson & Dan Sperber - 2002 - In L. Horn & G. Ward (eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell. pp. 607-632.
Pragmatics, Modularity and Mind‐reading.Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson - 2002 - Mind and Language 17 (1-2):3–23.

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References found in this work

Modal Logic: An Introduction.Brian F. Chellas - 1980 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Elements of symbolic logic.Hans Reichenbach - 1947 - London: Dover Publications.
Logic and Conversation.H. P. Grice - 1975 - In Donald Davidson & Gilbert Harman (eds.), The Logic of Grammar. Encino, CA: pp. 64-75.
Logic and Conversation.H. Paul Grice - 1975 - In Maite Ezcurdia & Robert J. Stainton (eds.), The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy. Broadview Press. pp. 47.

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