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Discussion of: Discourse Referents and External Anchors

in Developmental Thoughtby Josef Perner

Alan Garnham

Psychology

University of Sussexalang@susx.ac.uk

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Karttunen, 1969

Karttunen’s 1969 paper, published in Jim McCawley’s 1976 “Linguistic Underground” volume of Syntax and Semantics, was a precursor of modern theories of reference in both formal semantics (e.g. DRT) and cognitive science (e.g. Mental Models Theory)

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Hence,….

My own interest in Discourse Referents!

Mental models contain representations of entities that may stand in various relations to each other and to actual entities. Compare discourse referents and external

anchors

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Karttunen, 1969 / 1976….

Uses the notion of discourse referent to analyse a number of linguistic phenomena, In particular..

• The logic of complement constructions• Presupposition

He developed accounts of both of these in more detail later.

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However,….

The point of more general interest… As noted by McCawley in his introduction to

Karttunen’s paper …is the idea of indefinite NPs as both

binding variables (asserting existence - as in Russell’s account) - AND introducing “constants” (DRs) that can be referred to again

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Mental Models, DRs and DRT Psychological factors, findings etc, may

constrain psychological theories based on Mental Models containing DRs.

BUT, it is hard to deny that discourse is about things in the real world, imaginary worlds and abstract domains, and that there must be a good deal of veracity in the representations of them. Entities are represented as having various properties

and from various “perspectives”.

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Computational Theory I have argued elsewhere (Garnham, 1996 -

Johnson-Laird Festschrift) that the Mental Models theory of text processing is a computational theory in the sense of David Marr - the result of a logical task analysis of the processes involved. Some of Karttunen’s article can be read in a similar

way• THIS is what a theory of referent tracking MUST be like

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Perner’s Analysis The interesting and crucial point here…

Which is not a major issue in showing how a (psychological version of) a theory based around DRs can be applied to adult “language, inference and consciousness”

…is that the “Defining Label” plays a role the importance of which only becomes apparent when certain other (metarepresentional) processes on DRs don’t occur. Defining Labels also define perspectives on entities

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Adults and Identity Statements

Not problematic for adults! We make use of known identities to group

information in memory Anderson and Bower (1973)

• George Washington had good health• The first president of the US had good health

Not distinguished in memory

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Anderson and Hastie (1974) Not-previously-known identities

• James Bartlett is the lawyer• James Bartlett rescued the kitten• The lawyer rescued the kitten

If identities are learned first, verification of second and third sentence is equally quick, no matter which was presented

If presented later, actually seen sentences are verified quicker

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Semantic Networks Anderson’s theoretical position (at the

time - early 1970s) was based on semantic network-like representations (Anderson and Bower, HAM)

Nodes in semantic networks don’t need to have the structure that DR-based representations have Perner’s arguments indicate constraints on

the representations

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And in Conclusion…

A major advantage of Perner’s account of is that is provides a theoretical underpinning for a wide variety of developmental changes that appear at a similar time.

The account of problems with identity statements confirms an “unexpected” prediction of this kind of account