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The Very Idea of Dynamic Semantics
1994-06-17
9406026 | cmp-lg
"Natural languages are programming languages for minds." Can we or should we
take this slogan seriously? If so, how? Can answers be found by looking at the
various "dynamic" treatments of natural language developed over the last decade
or so, mostly in response to problems associated with donkey anaphora? In
Dynamic Logic of Programs, the meaning of a program is a binary relation on the
set of states of some abstract machine. This relation is meant to model aspects
of the effects of the execution of the program, in particular its input-output
behavior. What, if anything, are the dynamic aspects of various proposed
dynamic semantics for natural languages supposed to model? Is there anything
dynamic to be modeled? If not, what is all the full about? We shall try to
answer some, at least, of these questions and provide materials for answers to
others.