Interpretation of Noun Phrases in Intensional Contexts

INTERPRETATION OF NOUN PHRASES IN INTENSIONAL CONTEXTS Leonardo LESMO and Paolo TERENZIANI Dipartimento di Infor,natica Universita' di Torino C.so Svizzera 185- 10149 TORINO- ITALY ABSTRACT This paper presents a network formalism for representing the meaning of noun phrases occurring in the context of intensional verbs such as seek and want. The basic assumption is that an intermediate representation is useful to carry out the interpretation process perspi- cuously. The proposed representation keeps apart de-re (transparent) and de-dicto readings, stating, by means of suitable arcs and nodes, that in the first case there is a real counterpart of the described entity, whereas in the second case no such counterpart exists. Moreover, tbe concept of relevance of the description is emphasized and the rela- tionships between intensional contexts and the dicotomy existing between value-free and value-loaded readings of definite descriptions is discussed. Finally, t!ae impact of the intermediate representation on the discourse history is considered, in order to explain how such a representation accounts for the contextual data and updates them according to the informational conte,tts of the sentence being analyzed. 1. INTRODUCTION Formally, an intension is a mapping that associates with eve,y possible world (actually, with indices that identify possible worlds) a denotation, where a denotation is a set of entities (individuals, rela- tions, functions). If we take a term, say "animal", it denotes, in the present world, a set of individuals; but the meaning of the term can- not be characterized by that set. For instance, the terms "human" and the term "featherless biped" denote the same set, but their meaning is different, since the fact that there are ~ featherless bipeds except human beings, in this world, e.'m be regarded as a mere accident. It is not difficult to conceive of a different world where another species shares the same property with humans. The characterization of possible worlds has been subject to deep philosophical debates, which were mainly concerned with the relationships existing between "conceivable worlds" and "possible worlds", as well as with the connections existing between alternative worlds, but, for tim present purpose, we only need to note that: - The concept of "possible world" is rather easy to render formally, expanding the usual concept of interpretation in logics by introduc- ing "indices" on worlds. Thus, for instance, the mapping which assigns to each predicate symbol a relation (of the same arity) on the universe, must be viewed as a set of mappings (one for each world), since the denotation of the predicate can vat 3, fiom world to world. Equivalently, the intension of a n-ary predicate can be delined as a function from world indices to n-sty relations. - The concept of "possible world" is rather common in the everyday practice. For instance, in saying (1) John seeks a unicorn no relation between John and a real world entity referred to by % unicorn" can be assumed, since no such entity exists. Nonetheless (2) John seeks a centaur is different fi'om (1). Intuitively, the expression "centaur" has …

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