Dynamic semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics that treats the meaning of a sentence as its potential to update a context. In static semantics, knowing the meaning of a sentence amounts to knowing when it is true; in dynamic semantics, knowing the meaning of a sentence means knowing "the change it brings about in the information state of anyone who accepts the news conveyed by it."[1] In dynamic semantics, sentences are mapped to functions called context change potentials, which take an input context and return an output context. Dynamic semantics was originally developed by Irene Heim and Hans Kamp in 1981 to model anaphora, but has since been applied widely to phenomena including presupposition, plurals, questions, discourse relations, and modality.[2]
- ^ Veltman, Frank (1996). "Defaults in Update Semantics" (PDF). Journal of Philosophical Logic. 25 (3). doi:10.1007/BF00248150. S2CID 19377671.
- ^ Nowen, Rick; Brasoveanu, Adrian; van Eijck, Jan; Visser, Albert (2016). "Dynamic Semantics". In Zalta, Edward (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2020-08-11.