Discourse Representation Theory
Module Description
| Course | Module Abbreviation | Credit Points |
|---|---|---|
| BA-2010 | AS-CL, AS-FL | 8 LP |
| BA-2010[100%|75%] | CS-CL | 6 LP |
| BA-2010[50%] | BS-CL | 6 LP |
| BA-2010[25%] | BS-FL | 4 LP |
| Master | SS-SC-FAL | 8 LP |
| Lecturer | Kurt Eberle |
| Module Type | |
| Language | Englisch |
| First Session | 14.10.2026 |
| Time and Place | Mittwoch, 14:15 - 15:45 INF 289 / SR 3 |
| Commitment-Frist | tba. |
Participants
All advanced CL Bachelor students and all CL master students. Students from MSc Data and Computer Science or MSc Scientific Computing with Field of Application Computational Linguistics are welcome after getting permission from the lecturer. MSc Scientific Computing students can only take the course as HS for 8 LP. If the seminar should be oversubscribed, CL students will have priority.Prerequisites for Participation
- Introduction to Computational Linguistics
- Logical Foundations
- Formal Semantics
Assessment
- Paper presentation (4/2 LP)
- Written Exam (4 LP)
Content
With its 'discourse representation structures' (DRSs), 'discourse representation theory' (DRT) provides an expressive formal language that can be used to capture the content of discourses in logical detail, taking into account in particular the relationships between the individual sentences of an utterance or text.
In contrast to the currently prevailing representation of documents using neural networks (NN) and LLMs, the DRT approach follows the previously classical view that the semantic representation and meaning of a text can be calculated according to fixed rules based on the syntactic structure and order of the sentences. Although less interesting for derivation practice in the context of modern AI, DRT is of great epistemological importance because it deals with content-related phenomena that cannot be handled (or cannot be handled well) in other common types of representation.Key texts are used to highlight core topics in the development of the theory, such as the representation and meaning of anaphorically used pronouns and definite descriptions, events and states and their relationships to each other in texts, the representation and meaning of quantified statements, presuppositions and, in connection with this, the attitudes of the persons involved in the discourse (the respective 'speaker' and 'hearer') and the contribution of attitudinal states to the interpretation of events and information in discourse, whereby concepts such as internal and external 'anchors' and postulated ‘shared knowledge’ play an important role. Other important points are representations of nominalizations and inferences from DRSs.
Literature
| 1) | Basics: Representation of Objects, Events, States,...; Relations, Quantification | |
| Kamp 1981a | A theory of truth and semantic representation. In Groenendijk, J.a.o., editors 1981, Formal Methods in the Study of Language. Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam. |
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| Kamp 1981b | Evénements, représentation discursive et reference temporelle. Langages 64:39-64. |
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| Kamp 2014 |
Times and Events. Notes for a course at the University of Texas. (ms.) |
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| Kamp 2019 |
Tense and aspect in discourse representation theory. in R. Truswell, ed., 'The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure', Oxford University Press. |
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| Kamp, Reyle 1993 | From Discourse to Logic, Vol. 1 , 2. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Link KaRe 93 Chap.5.3-5.5 |
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| 2) | From a general point of view / overview | |
| van Eijck 2005 | Discourse Representation Theory Link |
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| Geurts, Beaver, Maier 2007-2024 | Discourse Representation Theory The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2024 Edition) Link |
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| Heusinger,ter Meulen 2013 | Meaning and the Dynamics of Interpretation, Selected Papers of Hans Kamp Link |
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| Kamp 1988 | Discourse Representation Theory:What it is and where it ought to go Link |
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| Kamp, van Genabith, Reyle 2010 | Discourse Representation Theory | |
| 3) | Intentions, Presupposition, Attitudes | |
| Grosz, Sidner | Attention, intentions, and the structure of discourse. In: Computational Linguistics 12:3, 175-204. |
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| Kamp 2006 | Temporal reference inside and outside propositional attitudes | |
| Kamp 2009 | Some Elements of a DRT-based Theory of the Representation of Mental States and the Semantics of Attitude Reports and Indirect Discourse. | |
| 4) | Inference | |
| Hamm, Kamp 2009 | Ontology and Inference. In: SinSpec, Working Papers of the SFB 732 (Vol 6), 2009 |
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| Hamm, Solstad 2009 | Anaphora resolution and reambiguation In: SinSpec, Working Papers of the SFB 732 (Vol 6), 2009 |
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| Lascarides, Asher 1993 | Temporal interpretation, discourse relations, and common sense entailment. Linguistics and Philosophy 16, 437{49} |
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| Liu 2021 | Understanding and Generating Language with Discourse Representation Structures. Link |
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Further reading will be announced during the course of the seminar
