This is a critical introduction to dynamic semantics taught by Daniel Rothschild (UCL) and Matthew Mandelkern (MIT/Oxford). We will explore both major dynamics systems and their alternatives, focusing on dynamic treatments of pronouns, presuppositions and modality.
Day 1: Pronouns and presuppositions
Day 2: Epistemic modals and generalized quantifiers
Day 3 : Situational alternatives for anaphora
Day 4 : Pragmatic alternatives for presuppositions
Day 5 : Plural anaphora and dynamic epistemic modals
Daniel’s AHRC project website contains more notes on dynamic semantics. Here are links to some other useful papers online.
Gareth Evans, Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses (I)
Lauri Karttunen Discourse References
David Lewis, Adverbs of quantication
David Lewis, Scorekeeping in a language game (seminal discussion of the the evolution of discourse)
Robert Stalnaker, Assertion
—, Pragmatic Presuppositions
Hans Kamp, Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation
Irene Heim, File Change Semantics and the Familiarity Theory of Definites
Irene Heim, Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases
Jeroen Groenendijk and Martin Stokhof, Dynamic Predicate Logic
David Beaver, Presupposition and Assertion in Dynamic Semantics
Rick Nouwen, Adrian Brasoveanu, Jan van Eijck, Albert Visser, Dynamic Semantics
Daniel Rothschild and Seth Yalcin, Three notions of dynamicness in language
Seth Yalcin, Introductory Notes on Dynamic Semantics
Rick Nouwen, E-type Pronouns: congressmen, sheep and paychecks
Irene Heim, On the projection problem for presupposition
Daniel Rothschild, Explaining presupposition projection
Frank Veltman, Defaults in Update Semantics
Seth Yalcin, Epistemic Modals
Maria Aloni, Quantification under Conceptual Covers, Chapter 3
Seth Yalcin, Epistemic Modality De Re
Philippe Schlenker, Local Contexts
—, Local Contexts and Local Meaning
—, Presuppositions and Local Contexts
Irene Heim, E-type pronouns and donkey anaphora
Paul Elbourne, Situations and Individuals
Sponsored by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Grants AH/N001877/1 and AH/M009602/1.
