Descriptions in Dynamic Semantics: Topic, Focus and Question Under Discussion

This work aims to implement a dynamic semantic framework within a Question under Discussion (QUD)-based approach to what-is-said (Roberts 2012; Schoubye and Stokke 2016), for understanding the meaning of descriptions broadly conceived. The background motivation is that, in the conversational approach a la Stalnaker (see, among others, Stalnaker (1978)) which underlies the QUD account, meaning cannot be simply considered statically, rather it has a dynamic impact on the context of discourse, in which a topic of conversation is established, ideally in form of a question, and participants are engaged in resolving it, by providing answers; in the light of this, the dynamic semantics adagio according to which meaning is context change potential is embraced. Adopting Aloni’s update semantics (Aloni et al. 2007), the present work aims to formalize the behavior of descriptions in the QUD-based approach to meaning; and by extending its machinery with a second-order language and a broader domain of quantification, empty descriptions can be accounted for as well, aligning with the intuition that our everyday discourse is often centered around non-referring expressions, and overcoming the limitations that classical semantic frameworks (for questions) face in dealing with empty reference. The definition of what-is-said (WiS) is then translated into the new dynamic framework (D-WiS), replacing static truth-conditional notions with context-sensitive update operations. And it can be demonstrated not only how this revised model better captures pragmatic features like congruence and relevance, overcoming limitations in prior QUD-based theories, but also that other pragmatic phenomena surrounding conversation, like topic, focus, presuppositions and implicatures, can be accounted for in a suitable formal framework.