Troubles on the Right Frontier
Résumé
The Right Frontier Constraint, originally proposed by Polanyi in the eighties is one of the central empirically motivated constraints on discourse update and anaphora resolution in SDRT. In this paper I want to look at some challenges to this constraint. I’ll begin with an overview of SDRT and the right frontier constraint as it’s formalized there. I’ll then go on to look at some of the challenges to the constraint. I’ll argue that the constraint survives these challenges but they lead us to look at new constraints on update and anaphora resolution.