TY - JOUR
T1 - Variable Handling and Compositionality
T2 - Comparing DRT and DTS
AU - Yana, Yukiko
AU - Mineshima, Koji
AU - Bekki, Daisuke
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/6/15
Y1 - 2019/6/15
N2 - This paper provides a detailed comparison between discourse representation theory (DRT) and dependent type semantics (DTS), two frameworks for discourse semantics. Although it is often stated that DRT and those frameworks based on dependent types are mutually exchangeable, we argue that they differ with respect to variable handling, more specifically, how substitution and other operations on variables are defined. This manifests itself in two recalcitrant problems posed for DRT; namely, the overwrite problem and the duplication problem. We will see that these problems still pose a challenge for various extended compositional systems based on DRT, while they do not arise in a framework of DTS where substitution and other operations are defined in the standard type-theoretic manner without stipulating any additional constraints. We also compare the notions of contexts underlying these two kinds of frameworks, namely, contexts represented as assignment functions and contexts represented as proof terms, and see what different predictions they make for some linguistic examples.
AB - This paper provides a detailed comparison between discourse representation theory (DRT) and dependent type semantics (DTS), two frameworks for discourse semantics. Although it is often stated that DRT and those frameworks based on dependent types are mutually exchangeable, we argue that they differ with respect to variable handling, more specifically, how substitution and other operations on variables are defined. This manifests itself in two recalcitrant problems posed for DRT; namely, the overwrite problem and the duplication problem. We will see that these problems still pose a challenge for various extended compositional systems based on DRT, while they do not arise in a framework of DTS where substitution and other operations are defined in the standard type-theoretic manner without stipulating any additional constraints. We also compare the notions of contexts underlying these two kinds of frameworks, namely, contexts represented as assignment functions and contexts represented as proof terms, and see what different predictions they make for some linguistic examples.
KW - Anaphora resolution
KW - Compositionality
KW - Dependent type theory
KW - Discourse representation theory
KW - Dynamic semantics
KW - Formal semantics
KW - Lambda-calculus
KW - Proof-theoretic semantics
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U2 - 10.1007/s10849-019-09294-3
DO - 10.1007/s10849-019-09294-3
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85067070427
VL - 28
SP - 261
EP - 285
JO - Journal of Logic, Language and Information
JF - Journal of Logic, Language and Information
SN - 0925-8531
IS - 2
ER -