Semantics Research Group Meeting, February 10, 2011

We provide Montague semantics with a notion of context that allows discourse dynamics to be tackled. The resulting framework subsumes Discourse Representation Theory without appealing to any ad hoc definition. It is based on Church's simply typed lambda-calculus, and the notions of free and bound variables are as usual. We then define the underlying dynamic logic and show how a Montagovian lexicon can be "dynamized" in a systematic way.

Abstract: Following [1]'s proposal of using continuations to model the dynamics of discourse, we propose a new way to build semantic representation of Modal Subordination. We show how different proposals (embedded and not embedded modalities, respective scope of quantifier and modalities, etc.) can be implemented compositionally without any change to the formalism, type theory, using only lexical semantics. We show how it can model dependencies betweem modal and non-modal facts, in particular with respect to constraints on pronominal anaphora.

[1] Philippe de Groote, 2006. "Towards a Montagovian account of dynamics". In proceedings of SALT 16, Tokyo.