1997/08/06 by Dorit Abusch, Abusch, Dorit, Mats Rooth +1
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge #cmp-lg #cs.CL
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cmp-lg/9708004
Final pre-publication version, 27 pages, Postscript. Final version appears in the proceedings of SALT VII
arxiv created 1997/08/06 · openalex publication_date 1997/08/06 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The paper considers participles such as "unknown", "identified" and "unspecified", which in sentences such as "Solange is staying in an unknown hotel" have readings equivalent to an indirect question "Solange is staying in a hotel, and it is not known which hotel it is." We discuss phenomena including disambiguation of quantifier scope and a restriction on the set of determiners which allow the reading in question. Epistemic modifiers are analyzed in a DRT framework with file (information state) discourse referents. The proposed semantics uses a predication on files and discourse referents which is related to recent developments in dynamic modal predicate calculus. It is argued that a compositional DRT semantics must employ a semantic type of discourse referents, as opposed to just a type of individuals. A connection is developed between the scope effects of epistemic modifiers and the scope-disambiguating effect of "a certain".