An implementation of plurality in discourse representation theory

Abstract

Covington, Nute, Schmitz, and Goodman (1988) wrote a program which takes natural language sentences as input, represents them using Discourse Representation Structures, then translates the structures into Prolog clauses. The clauses may be asserted into the database or used to query it. My thesis, PluralDRT, extends this program to handle plurality. Plural- DRT is meant to be a first attempt at implementing collective and distributive readings of plural sentences. Although, PluralDRT focuses on these types of readings, it also deals with plural anaphora, generic statements, and definite descriptions acting as anaphors.