van Rooy on Exhaustification

Robert van Rooy and Katrin Schultz. “Pragmatic Meaning and Non-monotonic Reasoning: The Case of Exhaustive Interpretation”:http://turing.wins.uva.nl/~vanrooy/exhLP-r.pdf (submitted)

bq. In this paper, we study the phenomenon of exhaustive interpretation. We discuss an analysis of exhaustification as interpretation in preference structures using work in non-monotonic reasoning. We first will discuss the proposal of Groenendijk & Stokhof (1984) and some problems it has to face. Then, the similarity of this account to predicate circumscription as introduced by McCarthy is discussed, an observation already made by van Benthem (1989). Finally the idea of interpretation in preferred models and independent developments in semantics/pragmatics are brought together to overcome the previously discussed limitations. Exhaustification is defined as a dynamic update function, circumscribing the predicate the question is about relative to the given answer. This predicate is defined in terms of relevance. (An earlier version of this paper appeared as `Exhaustification’ in the Tilburg workshop on computational semantics, January, 2003)