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<Paper uid="P91-1008">
  <Title>Open Explana~ lanatidegn Closed Open Narration Explanation/// ~xplanation Closed ~ Open Narration</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="67" end_page="67" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
* Result
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    <Paragraph position="2"> The reader's beliefs in analysing (5) verify the antecedents of Narration, States Overlap and Law 5. Narration conflicts with States Overlap, which in turn conflicts with Law 5. Moreover, the antecedent of Law 5 entails that of States Overlap, which entails that of Narration. So there is a 'Penguin-type' conflict where Law 5 has the most specific antecedent. In MASH Law 5's consequent, i.e. cause(me(ha), me(hb)), is inferred from these premises. The antecedent of Result is thus satisfied, but the antecedent to Background is not.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Result does not conflict with Narration, and so by Defeasible Modus Ponens, both Result(ha, 5b) and Narration(ha, hb) are inferred.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Note that thanks to the axioms on Background and Result and the inconsistency of overlap(el, e~) and el -~ e2, these discourse relations are inconsistent. This captures the intuition that if a causes b, then b could not have been the case when a happened. In particular, if Max switching off the light caused the darkness, then the room could not have been dark when Max switched off the light.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5">  c. He ate salmon.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> d. lie devoured lots of cheese.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> e. He won a dancing competition.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> The discourse structure for (9a-d) involves Cascaded Penguin Principles and Defeasible Modus Ponens as before. Use is made of the defeasible knowledge that having a meal is normally part of experiencing a lovely evening, and eating salmon and devouring cheese are normally part of having a meal if these events are connected: Guy experienced a lovely evening last night Elaboration He had a fantastic meal Elabora~-~f~~boration lie ate salmon He devoured Narration lots Of cheese We study the attachment of (9e) to the preceding text in detail. Given the concept of openness introduced above, the open clauses are (9d), (95) and (9a). So by the assumptions on text processing, the reader believes (9d, 9e), (9b, 9e) and (9a, 9e). (9d, 9e) verifies the antecedent to Narration, but intuitively, (9d) is not related to (9e) at all. The reason for this can be explained in words as follows:  * (9d) and (9e) don't form a narrative because: null - Winning a dance competition is normally not part Of a meal; - So (9e) doesn't normally elaborate (9b); - But since (9d) elaborates (95), (9e) can  normally form a narrative with (9d) only if (9e) also elaborates (9b).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> Thcse intuitions can be formalised, where Info(a, fl) is a. gloss for &amp;quot;me(a) is having a meal and me(fl) is winning a dance competition&amp;quot;:  The result is a 'Nixon Polygon'. There is irresolvable conflict between Narration and the Constraint on Narration because their antecedents are not logically related:</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> The above in MASH yields \]i~Narration(9d, 9e) and ~-~Narration(9d, 9e). We assume that believing (9d, 9e) and failing to support any discourse relation between (9d) and (9e) is incoherent. So (9d,9e) cannot be believed. Thus the Nixon Diamond provides the key to discourse 'popping', for (9e) must be related to one of the remaining open clauses; i.e. (95) or (9a). In fact by making use of the knowledge that winning a dance competition is normally part of experiencing a lovely evening if these things are connected, Elaboration(9a, 9e) and Narration(9b, 9e) follow as before, in agreement with intuitions.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> Conclusion We have proposed that distinct natural interpretations of texts with similar syntax can be explained in terms of defeasible rules that represent  causal laws and Gricean-style pragmatic maxims.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> The distinct discourse relations and event relations arose from intuitively compelling patterns of defeasible entailment. The Penguin Principle captures the intuition that a reader never ignores information salient in text that is relevant to calculating temporal and discourse structure. The Nixon Diamond provided the key to 'popping' from subordinate discourse structure.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="14"> We have investigated the analysis of texts involving only the simple past tense, with no other temporal markers present. Lascarides &amp; Asher (1991) show that the strategy pursued here can be applied to the pluperfect as well. Future work will involve extending the theory to handle texts that feature temporal connectives and adverbials.</Paragraph>
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