<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<Paper uid="P88-1010">
  <Title>An Integrated Framework for Semantic and Pragmatic Interpretation 1</Title>
  <Section position="9" start_page="84" end_page="84" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
9 Further Work
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We have developed a mechanism of semantic and pragmatic interpretation that relaxes the constraints of compositional semantics just-enough to allow pragmatic information to play its necessary role in the derivation of sentence interpretations. Central to the mechanism are conditional interpetations, which allow us to separate constraints on interpretation that depend only on syntactic structure, represented by the sense component of the conditional interpretation, from those that depend on pragmatic choices, represented by the assumption component. The interpretation process is carried out by a combination of semantic-interpretation rules, which build conditional interpretations of phrases on the basis of lexical and syntactic information, and pragmatic-discharge rules, which satisfy assumptions on the basis of discourse and domain information. While the system we have implemented deals with a variety of semantic and pragmatic phenomena, of which only a few were discussed in this paper, it can only be seen as a first limited instantiation of a system architecure that requires much further work. We shall mention now a few of the directions that might be pursued in developing the architecture further.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> At the most theoretical level, it is interesting to note the formal similarity of our interpretation rules to rules in &amp;quot;deductive ~ models of programruing language semantics \[25\]. It is also interesting to consider the connection between conditional interpretations and the relational theory of meaning from situation semantics \[3\]. These two similarities might be fruitful in developing a semantic justification for our formal interpretation rules in terms of constraints on interpretation relations.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The applicability of discharge rules depends in many cases on the compatibility of expected and supplied sorts for relation arguments. In general, these sorts may be parameterized by assumption parameters, and some semantic interpretation problems not considered here suggest that higher-order parameterized types, instead of first-order sorts, may be needed. A suitable notion of type subsumption for such higher-order parameterized types \[15\] would be useful. More generally, the whole architecture would benefit from a semantically grounded treatment of parameters and parameterized objects.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Other pragmatic processes associated with discharge rules, such as those for reference resolution, also must be able to reason with parameterized objects--for example in checking the uniqueness of a dependent object relative to arbitrary parameter assignments. Ultimately, the proper treatment of singular noun phrases in context will require a closer connection between assumptions and \[parameterized\] fragments of the discourse context.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>