We develop an analysis of discourse anaphora—the relationship between a pronoun and an antecedent earlier in the discourse—using games of partial information. The analysis is extended to include information from a variety of different sources of information, including lexical semantics, contrastive stress, grammatical relations and decision theoretic aspects of the context. In this paper, we wi...

The paper deals with the cohesion part of a model of global discourse interpretation, usually known as Veins Theory (VT). By taking from the Rhetorical Structure Theory the notions of nuclearity and relations, but ignoring the relations’ names, VT computes from rhetorical structures strings of discourse units, called veins, from which domains of accessibility can be determined for each discours...

We present a semantic theory of causal discourse which allows us to derive expectations about upcoming discourse, specifically when to expect various types of explanations. We apply our theory to the phenomenon of implicit causality and show how the semantics of implicit causality verbs interacts with discourse structure. In particular, we show why certain verbs trigger explanations per default...

In “On Saying That,” Donald Davidson offered an analysis of indirect discourse that was meant to overcome the classic difficulties of a semantic theory of indirect discourse. Additionally, Davidson’s treatment of indirect discourse was purported to further his project of explaining meaning in a purely extensional, explicitly truth-defined, and compositional manner. The particular paratactic the...

In this paper, we propose a Connectivedriven Dependency Tree (CDT) scheme to represent the discourse rhetorical structure in Chinese language, with elementary discourse units as leaf nodes and connectives as non-leaf nodes, largely motivated by the Penn Discourse Treebank and the Rhetorical Structure Theory. In particular, connectives are employed to directly represent the hierarchy of the tree...

This paper offers a semantic theory of uses of now in which now refers to a time introduced in discourse. I argue that the interpretation of an anaphoric use of now is determined by the rhetorical structure of the discourse in which the token of now figures.

This paper presents a model of collaborative discourse which integrates problem-solving, discourse, dialogue initiative and connict resolution. Experimental evidence obtained from an implementation of this theory demonstrates the eeectiveness of dialogue initiative and connict resolution within the model. 1 Motivation Two recently implemented voice dialogue systems utilize the principle that di...

This article draws attention to the case of Aceh analyse mechanisms through which ideologically driven geographic imaginings obscured role place and class in colonial anti-colonial violence Indonesia. Its main perspective is region's West Coast. In course long brutal Dutch-Acehnese war (1873–1942), Coast Sumatra was transformed from a dynamic centre trade, commerce, religious renewal into front...

In this paper, I revisit and reflect on my own research partners’ attempts at investigating the relationship between education politics through lens of discourse theory analysis methodology. This auto-analytical reflection corresponds to shift in studies from a technically understood more generally conceived discourse-analytical approach (Howarth & Torfing, 2005). Revisiting analyses made m...