ITRI SEMINAR
               Thursday 23rd October at 12.00

     "Context-dependent interpretation of noun phrases"

                      Kees van Deemter
                   University of Brighton


Pronominal anaphora  (exemplified  by words  like  `he'  and
`she') has  long  been  the  main  area  of  language  where
linguists  were  looking  to  find  context-dependencies  of
interpretation. In  recent  years, however,  it  has  become
clear that many other expressions  can also be dependent  on
context for their  interpretation, in much  the same way  as
pronominal   anaphors.   Focussing   on   Noun    Phrases, a
particularly bold hypothesis says  that Noun Phrases of  all
different  syntactic   types  (definite,   indefinite,   and
quantificational Noun Phrases) can behave as anaphors.  This
talk will try to make this hypothesis plausible by doing two
things. First we will sketch a theory by Rob van der  Sandt,
in which all presupposition triggers are treated as anaphors
(see  his  seminal   paper  "Presupposition  Projection   as
Anaphora Resolution", Journal of Semantics 9, 1992). Then we
will propose several modifications and extensions of Van der
Sandt's theory, which  will cause the  theory to cover  many
aspects of Noun Phrase semantics that fall outside the  area
that it  was  originally  meant to  describe.  -  This  talk
reports on joint work with Emiel Krahmer.