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The paper examines some of the characteristic features of natural language interaction with a database system and its implications for the processing of singular definite descriptions. Some proposals are made for assessing the uniqueness claim of the singular definite article in the context of retrieval from a relational database. Other standard assumptions such as the extensional evaluation and referent evaluation exclusively in the database - rather than within the discourse model - are critically examined. INTRODUCTION A comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon of singular definite description in natural language processing constitutes a research program par excellence in the. | INTERPRETING SINGULAR DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS IN DATABASE QUERIES Genevieve Berry-Rogghe Department of Computer and Information Science . Temple University Philadelphia PA 19122 USA ABSTRACT The paper examines some of the characteristic features of natural language interaction with a database system and its implications for the processing of singular definite descriptions. Some proposals are made for assessing the uniqueness claim of the singular definite article in the context of retrieval from a relational database other standard assumptions such as the extensional evaluation and referent evaluation exclusively in the database - rather than within the discourse model - are critically examined. INTRODUCTION A comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon of singular definite description in natural language processing constitutes a research program par excellence in the field of cognitive science. Not only does it involve the various cognitive disciplines but also the integration of the traditional levels of analysis namely the syntactic semantic and pragmatic levels as well as including a performance or processing level dealing with mechanisms for memory managment of referring expressions. Linguistic theories initially attempted to account for the syntactic conditions of well-formedness governing the introduction of singular definite nounphrases in sentences by postulating co-referentiality with a previously occurring indefinite nounphrase having the same referential index. But it became clear that the postulated requirements of co-referentiallty could only be adequately stated by means of an extended notion of discourse referent see Karttunen 1968 b . Logicians and philosophers of language since Russell have studied problems of reference and of the logical form of referring expressions occurring in various contexts for a selection see Llnsky 1971 . But it was pointed out in Donnel-lan 1966 that a strictly truthfunctional analysis of singular definite expressions may in
