Philippe de Groote: Towards a Montagovian account of dynamics

The paper deals with improving Montagovian account of semantics by introducing necessary machinery for dealing with both left and right context. Before (in Montagovian semantics) it was impossible for the left and right context to share information and variables. Authors look in particular at dealing with intersentential pronominal binding, including quantification scoping and donkey sentences.

This extension makes it possible to actually deal with discourse without changing the notation of lambda-calculus. Previous true/false outcomes have been replaced with “waiting for the left/right” context to be resolved. Context is being updated as the sentences are being resolved.

Advantages:

• approach is independent of any particular logic; the user may choose her or his favorite framework
• notation of lambda calculus is unchanged
• deal with the problem of two Discourse Representation Structure merge- by proposing a new way of combining Montague semantics and discourse representation