Pragmatic Discourse Representation Theory

Abstract

This paper presents a pragmatic approach to Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) in an attempt to address the pragmatic limitations of DRT (Werth 1999; Simons 2003). To achieve a more pragmatic DRT model, this paper extends standard DRT framework to incorporate more pragmatic elements such as representing agents' cognitive states and the complex process through which agents recognize utterances employing the linguistic content in forming mental representations of other agent's cognitive states. The paper gives focus to the usually ignored link in DRT literature between speaker beliefs and the linguistic content, and between the linguistic content and hearer's beliefs.