Contextual processing of locative prepositional phrases

Contextual processing of locative prepositional phrases Nicolas DENAND & Monique ROLBERT Laboratoire d’Informatique Fondamentale de Marseille 163, avenue de Luminy - Case 901 F-13288 Marseille Cedex 9 France {Nicolas.Denand,Monique.Rolbert}@lif.univ-mrs.fr Abstract This paper deals with contextual aspects of loca- tive preposition processing. Firstly, accordingly to a study on the referential behavior of the pronominal adverb ”y” in its locative uses, we show that static locative prepositions are functions, not only at the conceptual level (as shown in previous studies), but also from a contextual point of view. Such functions introduce new objects in the discourse context, that have to be taken into account in classical contex- tual processing tasks, such as reference resolution or question answering. Then, we show how these phe- nomena can fit into contextual formalisms like DRT and DPL. 1 Introduction Most often, in a nominal anaphoric relation, a personal pronoun (like ”le”(clitic)/”him”) is in- volved in an anaphoric relationship with a nom- inal phrase (NP), located in the same sentence as the pronoun or a previous one. The pronoun is therefore related to the discourse individual referred to by the NP: (1)Un homme est venu ce matin. Paul le connaissait.(A man came this morning. Paul knew him.) In this example, the pronoun ”le”/”him” is anaphorically linked to the NP ”un homme”/”a man”. The pronoun refers to the discourse en- tity introduced by the NP. The antecedent NP can be found in different syntactical configurations, without being neces- sarily related to the case of the pronoun itself. For instance, the personal pronoun ”elle”/”it” (subject) can be in anaphoric relation to a NP, itself embedded in a complement (here, loca- tive): (2)J’ai pos´e mon portable sur la table parce qu’elle ´etait propre.(I put my laptop on the table because it was clean.) Similarly, the clitic pronoun ”y” in its non- locative uses is anaphorically linked to a NP. These uses were already studied (see, for exam- ple, (Ruwet, 1990)). What about locative uses of the pronominal adverb ”y”1? That is, when it is used to replace the locative prepositional complement of a verb (Locative Prepositional Phrase, or LPP), like in: (3)Cette ville est belle. J’y ai v´ecu autre- fois.(This town is beautiful. I lived there formerly.) Here again, in a classical way, one can say that ”y”/”there” refers to a ”place” introduced by a NP preceding the pronoun. We have a prob- lem though, to rebuild the exact locative seman- tics of the pronominal sentence (here, something like ”in this town”). The situation gets even more complicated when the antecedent of the pronoun lies itself in a LPP, like in the follow- ing: (4)J’ai pass´e mes vacances dans le Gard. J’y ai v´ecu autrefois.(I spent my holydays in the Gard. I lived there formerly.) In this paper, we show that the pronominal adverb ”y” can be anaphorically linked to a LPP, locative preposition included. This leads us to the fact that some LPPs introduce indi- viduals in the discourse context. We discuss the functional role played by locative preposi- …

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