Cross-speaker anaphora in dynamic semantics

Abstract

In this paper, I show that anaphora across speakers shows both dynamic and static sides. To capture them all formally, I will adopt semantics based on the assumption that variables range over individual concepts that connect epistemic alternatives. As information increases, a variable can take a different range of possible individual concepts. This is captured by the notion of virtual individual (= vi ), a set of individual concepts which are indistinguishable in an information state. The use of a pronoun involves two information states, one for the antecedent, which is always part of the common ground, and the other for the pronoun. Information increase changes vi s for variables in the common ground. A pronoun can be used felicitously if there is a unique virtual individual in the information state for the antecedent which does not split in two or more distinctive virtual individuals in the information state for the pronoun. The felicity condition for cross-speaker anaphora can be satisfied in declaratives involving modality, interrogatives and imperatives in a rather less demanding way, because in these cases the utterance does not necessarily require non-trivial personal information for proper use of a pronoun.