Abstract
In this Chapter I discuss the formal semantic implementation of the two-component approach to aspect. The analysis is set in the framework of Discourse Representation Theory.1 The theory is ideally suited for the treatment of aspect because it at once develops a conceptual representation and a truth-conditional interpretation. Discourse Representation Theory provides a rigorous semantic interpretation at the level of mental representation. It constructs an ongoing, dynamic representation of discourse, in which the meaning of a sentence contributes to the meaning of the text or discourse. The theory deals with semantic and pragmatic information, including information arrived at through inference.
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Notes
I would like to thank Nicholas Asher and Hans Kamp for comments on this material; I also thank the Semantics Group of the Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Texas for useful feedback and discussion.
Discourse Representation Theory was developed more or less simultaneously by Hans Kamp and Irene Heim. In Heim’s work it is known as File Card Semantics. The basic references for the theory are Heim 1982, 1983a, 1983b and Kamp, 1979, 1981a, 1981b, 1985. See also Kamp & Rohrer 1989, Kamp & Frey 1990. Recent papers using DR theory include Asher 1986, Covington & Schmitz 1987, Frey 1985, Klein 1986, Guenthner 1987, Reyle 1985, Roberts 1986, Rooth 1986, Sells 1987.
Kamp’s notion of a mental model includes the concepts conveyed by a sentence as well as truth-conditional information about the structure of a situation. The mental models approach is not monolithic: not all agree. According to the psychologist Johnson-Laird, discourse models “make explicit the structure not of sentences but of situations as we perceive or imagine them” (1989:471). Johnson-Laird presents a useful discussion of mental models, tracing the approach to the prescient work of Craik 1943. See also Garnham 1987, 1989. For a general introduction to cognitive science see Posner 1989.
Results from psycholinguistic experiments strongly support the mental models approach. They show that people rely on inferences of a kind that crucially involves models of situations. For discussion of inferences as a central feature of comprehension see Clark 1977, Bransford et al 1972. Work on anaphora has been particularly telling, cf Stenning 1978, 1986; Garnham & Oakhill 1989. Similar arguments set in a computer science context are presented in Webber 1981.
The notion of possible worlds allows the modelling of conditions under which a sentence that is true or false in this world might be true in another world; for an introductory discussion see Dowty, Wall & Peters 1981:124–5.
For a lucid discussion of the role of conceptual features in language and in the representations of the theory, see the discussion of the Passé Simple and the Imparfait in Kamp & Rohrer 1989, Chapter 3.
Following Kamp & Rohrer, I will assume a set of instants in the model; intervals are constructed from the set of instants. In traditional tense logic statements are evaluated at points of time. In recent work, however, intervals have been proposed as basic for evaluation (Bennett & Partee 1978, Dowty 1979 ). The connection between the point-approach and the period-approach is discussed in van Benthem 1980.
In this treatment tense and adverbials trigger features of temporal location only. Kamp & Rohrer, dealing with French, assign features of both temporal location and aspectual viewpoint to tenses.
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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Smith, C.S. (1991). Aspectual Meaning in Discourse Representation Theory. In: The Parameter of Aspect. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7911-7_7
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