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Description:
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This is a new edition of an already published book.
People often mean more than they say. Grammar on its own is typically
insufficient for determining the full meaning of an utterance; the
assumption that the discourse is coherent or 'makes sense' has an important
role to play in determining meaning as well. Logics of Conversation
presents a dynamic semantic framework called Segmented Discourse
Representation Theory, or SDRT, where this interaction between discourse
coherence and discourse interpretation is explored in a logically precise
manner. Combining ideas from dynamic semantics, commonsense reasoning and
speech act theory, SDRT uses its analysis of rhetorical relations to
capture intuitively compelling implicatures. It provides a computable
method for constructing these logical forms and is one of the most formally
precise and linguistically grounded accounts of discourse interpretation
currently available. The book will be of interest to researchers and
students in linguistics and in philosophy of language.
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