Dynamic inquisitive semantics

LoLa Advancedweek 3

each day

Lecturers:
Jakub Dotlačil (Utrecht University)
Floris Roelofsen (University of Amsterdam)

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/inquisitivesemantics/courses/esslli-2021

Abstract: This course brings together two important strands in the formal analysis of natural language meaning: dynamic semantics and inquisitive semantics. It develops an integrated logical framework, dynamic inquisitive semantics, and demonstrates how this framework can be used to analyze various dynamic aspects of the meaning of questions in discourse.

Specific topics include anaphora within and across questions, intervention effects in questions analyzed as failed dynamic binding, the semantics of Q particles as dynamic identification operators, dynamic quantification and the derivation of pair-list readings in questions with quantifiers, and connections between weak/strong donkey anaphora and exhaustive/non-exhaustive question readings. We will see that the analysis of these phenomena in the proposed framework goes beyond the current state of the art.