Dynamic Semantics for Intensional Transitive Verbs - a Case Study
Marta Sznajder

Abstract:
In my thesis I challenge the two assumptions that have shaped the
research on intensional transitive verbs so far: first, that ITVs are
evaluated with respect to the belief state of their agent, and second,
that their nonspecific readings are derived from the specific ones. I
show that in evaluating sentences containing ITVs the information
state of the hearer is crucial. Considering the knowledge of the
hearer rather than that of the agent leads to a conclusion that a
novel, dynamic approach to semantics of ITVs is needed.

The formalism I designed was inspired by the work of Barwise and
Cooper on generalized quantifiers. The primary reading of an
intensional transitive verb therefore relates two quantifiers, the
first one specifying the individual that is the agent, the other one
that provides a set of alternatives for filling the object
position. Specific readings can be defined in purely algebraic terms
as the ones where the object is given a denotation that is a filter
generated by a singleton set from the domain.

All of the above formal setup is done in a dynamic way, namely in the
tradition of update semantics. Instead of a definition of truth of
formulas I define an update relation between information states and
sentences of my formal language. In that system an information state
is a set of interpretation functions from the language for generalized
quantifiers into a given domain.