Lascarides, A. and N. Asher [1993] Temporal Interpretation, Discourse Relations and Commonsense Entailment, Linguistics and Philosophy, 16(5), pp437-493, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Holland.
This paper presents a formal account of how to determine the discourse relations between propositions introduced in a text, and the relations between the events they describe. The distinct natural interpretations of texts with similar syntax are explained in terms of defeasible rules. These characterise the effects of causal knowledge and knowledge of language use on interpretation. Patterns of defeasible entailment that are supported by the logic in which the theory is expressed are shown to underly temporal interpretation.
@article{lascarides:asher:1993a,
author = {Alex Lascarides and Nicholas Asher},
year = {1993},
title = {Temporal Interpretation, Discourse Relations and Commonsense
Entailment},
journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy},
volume = {16},
number = {5},
pages = {437--493},
publisher = {Kluwer Academic Publishers}
}