Reference and Anaphoric Relations

About this book

The notions of reference and anaphoric relations have been discussed since antiquity and they are still one of the most challenging subjects in linguistics, logics and philosophy of language. The quest for a satisfying account of anaphoric reference has initiated a wide range of new and interesting approaches in formal semantics; and recent research confirms the old insight that reference and anaphoricity are closely interrelated issues. This volume brings together fifteen original research articles on the representation and interpretation of indefinite and definite noun phrases, anaphoric pronouns, and closely related issues such as scope and quantifier movement. The analyses are worked out within discourse representation theory, file change semantics, and dynamic logic, a family of recent frameworks developed for the formal analysis of discourse semantics. Particular attention is paid to E-type theories of pronouns and to the use of choice functions in the semantics of noun phrases. The papers collected in this volume shed light on the question of how linguistic expressions establish reference and anaphoric relations. The use of choice function approaches within dynamic semantics opens new research perspectives on these questions. Audience: This book will be of interest to scholars and students of linguistics, logicians, philosophers of language, computational linguists, and computer scientists with an interest in the semantics of natural language.