Disambiguation of underspecified discourse representation structures under anaphoric constraints

Abstract

The paper explores the possibility of performing anaphora resolution and presupposition accommodation in a situation where scope relations are only partially known. For underspecification of scope ambiguity, the approach builds on Reyle's formalism of Underspecified Discourse Representation Structures (UDRSs, (Reyle, 1993)) which is extended to cover arbitrary constraints from anaphora resolution. Wellformedness conditions are formulated for UDRSs to restrict scope readings as required by anaphora resolution. Based on these conditions, a disambiguation algorithm is presented for scope resolution and presupposition accommodation, which has also been implemented.