Dynamic

It has been used to describe a formal approach to SEMANTICS which characterizes the MEANING of a sentence as its potential to change INFORMATION states in a language user (dynamic semantics). It is opposed to a ‘static’ model, in which meaning is viewed as equivalent to the TRUTH CONDITIONAL content of sentences. An information state is seen as a set of possibilities – an encoding of information about the possible DENOTATIONS of the expressions of the language and about the possible values of variables used in these expressions (ANAPHORA). These states are used to define the information change potential of expressions – the change which is brought about by the utterance of a sentence. The analysis explicates the continuous process of updating interpretations, as information states come to be extended through the addition of new discourse information and the elimination of certain possibilities, and as a result the approach is also referred to as update semantics. The approach has been particularly used in explicating PRONOUN co-reference and PRESUPPOSITION.