This paper presents a network formalism for representing the meaning of noun phrases occurring in the context of intensional verbs such as seek and want. The basic assumption is that an intermediate representation is useful to carry out the interpretation process perspicuously. The proposed representation keeps apart de-re (transparent) and de-dicto readings, stating, by means of suitable arcs and nodes, that in the first case there is a real counterpart of the described entity, whereas in the second case no such counterpart exists. Moreover, the concept of relevance of the description is emphasized and the relationships between intensional contexts and the dicotomy existing between value-free and value-loaded readings of definite descriptions is discussed. Finally, the impact of the intermediate representation on the discourse history is considered, in order to explain how such a representation accounts for the contextual data and updates them according to the informational contents of the sentence being analyzed.
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