Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
Unbound Anaphoric Pronouns:
E-Type, Dynamic, and Structured Propositions Approaches
By Friederike Moltmann
In this paper, we have seen some fundamental problems with the E-type account as well as the dynamic semantic account. Whereas the crucial advantages of the E-types account were the preservation of the traditional notion of proposition with its truth conditions being independent of those of the previous discourse context, the advantages of the dynamic semantic account included the variable-like treatment of unbound anaphora, The present account incorporates both of those aspects:[1] by using structured propositions which are meanings associated with individual sentence (though possibly with truth conditions that need to be supplemented by a background) and
[2] by using parametric objects thus giving justice to the variable-like status of unbound anaphora.
It accounts for the antecedent-relatedness and discourse-drivenness of unbound anaphora, the Regress Problem, the Same-Value Condition, and the problem of determiner choice, in essential the way the dynamic account does. The account moreover, did give some importance to the notion of context change, but in the sense that backgrounds of static means are determined by background contexts that themselves may change within the utterance of a sentence. The crucial empirical advantages of the present account over the dynamic account are that it gives a more immediate or better account of deviations from antecedent conditions and that it provides a solution to Barker's problem.(...)
Source: Semantics Archive
To appear in Synthese
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 07:36 GMT
Updated: Monday, 28 February 2005 07:38 GMT
