Subject: semantics

yeom , jae - il ; a presuppositional analysis of specific indefinites : common grounds as structured information states ; 0-8153 - 3175 - 4 , cloth ; pages , $ 65 ; garland publishing ; outstanding dissertations in linguistics a specific indefinite presupposes that someone has in mind an individual who has the property denoted by its descriptive content . having an individual in mind means that the agent knows who the referent is , and thus it affects the information state of the agent , but not the others . the asymmetric information , shared by all participants in a conversation , cannot be represented when the common ground has only one information state . thus a common ground must have multiple information states , each for each participant in a conversation . the information state of the agent who has an individual in mind must be differentiated from the others ' by being structured into sub-information - states so that each sub-information - state associates the specific indefinite with a different unique individual . it then conveys the information that the agent has some individual in mind , but that it is not known yet who it is . this analysis thus requires a new dynamic semantics which is partially representational and partially denotational . this leads to a new analysis of proper names . specific indefinites tend to have widest scope , which is explained by claiming that specific indefinites trigger presuppositions . presuppositions are assumed to have various scopes with respect to operators in a sentence , and the strongest reading is preferred on rational and economic basis . it is shown that stronger readings roughly correspond to wider scopes . this book will be of interest to scholars who work on indefinite nps , presuppositions , anaphora in belief contexts , and dynamic semantics in general . e - mail : info @ garland . com
