A New Architecture for Functional Grammar (Functional Grammar Series)

The question of discourse representation 101

example in Figure 5. Kamp and Reyle go on to elaborate this notation in
various ways, which are, however, beyond the scope of the present brief
survey.

x y u v

Jay(x)

Kay(y)

X likes y

u = x

v = y

U dates v

Figure 5. DRS-style representation of the discourse Jay likes Kay. He dates her.

3.3. Segmented Discourse Representation Structures

Asher (1993) proposes a somewhat different version of DRT from Kamp
and Reyle. His version incorporates rhetorical relations, and is based
around a unit called a Segmented Discourse Representation Structure
(SDRS). A slightly adapted example is given in Figure 6.

k 1 := x, s 1 , y k 2 := u, s 2 , v

Jay(x) u = x

s 1 -like(x,y) s 2 -date(u,v)

Kay(y) v = y

Cause(k 1 ,k 2 )

Figure 6. SDRS-style representation of the discourse Jay likes Kay. He dates her.

As will be apparent, it has been assumed here that the content of the
first sentence is the cause of that of the second.

3.4. Situation Theory

A brief mention should also be made here of Situation Theory (ST), and in
particular Devlin's (1991) version of ST, which is discussed in relation to
FG by Connolly (1998). Although not a fully-fledged theory of discourse,
Devlin's version of ST does include a means of describing the situation in