Questions in update semantics
Jeroen Groenendijk · UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) · 1998
The paper presents a static and dynamic version of an update semantics for a language of predicate logic enriched with simplex interrogatives. The static version gives rise to the same logic as the denotational semantics given for the same language in Groenendijk & Stokhof (1997). The dynamic semantics has some additional features, which concern anaphoric relations, and present us with a notion of existential quantification which seems to correspond to the specific use of indefinites. At meta-logical level an absolute notion of discourse coherence is defined which covers the usual notion of answerhood as a special case. More fine-grained notions of relevance and coherence are given as well, and are applied to simple interrogative dialogues.